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KOUCHTCN, MIFFLi:. 






JAMES MADISON 



BY 



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SYDNEY HOWARD GAY 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

dbe Rrtierstbe presrf, CambribjjE 

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COPYRIGirr, 1884, BY SYDNEY HOWARD GAY 

COPYRIGUT, 1898, BY HOUGHTON, >nFFLIN Si CO. 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



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EDITOR'S PREFACE 

Few men, so weU equipped inteUectuaUy as 
was Madison, have, by reason of the charactensUcs 
of their equipment, been so dependent for success 
upon the conditions amid which they have been 
placed. Madison was preeminently what may be 
called a cabinet statesman. He was better a. a 
thinker than as an actor. He had the constructive 
quality, and was a master of principles of govern- 
ment; but in the practical application of those 
principles which he himself had formulated and 
shaped, if not created, he was not fitted to excel, 
unless possibly when the current of events was 
running smoothly. His strength did not he in 
the executive or administrative directions. Had 
he died before he was President, his fame would 
not have been less than it is to-day, when he is 
remembered and admired chiefly for his labors 
in connection with the creation of the Constitu- 
tion and the foundation of the government. He 
amply deserved the honor of the presidential office 
though it added so little to his reputation ; but it 
reaUy meant that because he had done one task 
exceedingly well, he was now appointed to do a 



vi EDITOR'S PREFACE 

very different task much less well. Never was a 
ruler less fitted to hold the helm in troubled times, 
and it was hard fortune for him to receive from 
his friend and predecessor the bequest of a war. 
Probably no man could have made the conflict of 
1812 a success, but Madison hardly knew how 
even to try to make it so. His career was not 
picturesque. I remember that Mr. Gay deplored 
the difficulty which he found in his endeavors to 
make his hero appear personally interesting. But 
this was a secondary matter. Madison is one of 
the men of whom the country has always, and 
with good reason, been especially proud. It was 
not alone that his character was high, but his 
qualities as a statesman have been recognized as 
of the first order. None of our public men has 
been more useful to the country. He was in 
active life for a very long time ; he was concerned 
in all the important events of more than thirty 
years. The story of his life is the history of the 
country during all that period. Mr. Gay, in spite 
of his complaint, has certainly contributed to the 
series one of its most valuable volumes. He was 
a writer thoroughly equipped for his task, a 
scholar in American history. It seems hard that 
he should not have survived to witness the now 
prevalent interest in the study of that subject, 
an interest which he did so much to promote, 
but which was only beginning to manifest itseK 



EDITOR'S PREFACE vii 

during his lifetime. What changes he might have 

desired to make in this volume, had he survived 

to this day, it is impossible to say ; but probably 

he would have found little to do in this direction. 

He was too thorough and conscientious a writer 

to dismiss his book until he had brought it to the 

best possible condition ; and no new material of 

importance would now be at his disposal. His 

volume may well stand in the shape in which it 

came from his desk. 

JOHN T. MORSE, JR. 

September, 1898. 



CONTENTS 

CHAP. P*0« 

I. The Virginia Madisoks 1 

II. The Young Statesman 15 

III. In Congress 28 

IV. In the State Assesibly 45 

V. In the Virginia Legislature .... 61 

VI. Public Disturbances and Anxieties . . 73 

VII. The Constitutional Convention ... 84 

Vin. "The Comtromises" 94 . 

IX. Adoption of the Constitution . . .110 

X. The First Congress 122 

XI. National Finances — Slavery .... 144 

Xn. Federalists and Republicans . . . . 164 

XIII. French Politics 185 

XrV. His Latest Years in Congress ... 207 

XV. At Home — " Resolutions of '98 and '99 " . 225 

XVI. Secretary of State 242 

XVII. The Embargo 254 

XVIII. Madison as President 272 

XIX. War with England 290 

XX. Conclusion 309 

Index 325 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

James Madison Frontispiece 

From the painting by Sully in the Corcoran Gallery of 
Art, Washington, D. C. 

Autograph from a MS. in the New York Public Li- 
brary, Lenox Building. 

The vignette of " Montpelier," Madison's home at 
Montpelier, Va., is from a photograph. Page 

Facsimile of Jasies Madison's Handwriting . facing 16 

Letter written from Richmond, June 27, 1788, to George 
Washington, announcing the adjournment of the Virginia 
Convention. From the original in the archives of the 
State Department at Washington. 
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney facing 98 

From the original painting by Gilbert Stuart in the pos- 
session of Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, D. D., LL. D., 
Charleston, S. C. 

Autograph from a MS. in the New York Public Library, 
Lenox Building. 
Fisher Ames facing 162 

From the miniature painted by John Trumbull in 1792, 
now in the Art GaUery of Yale University. 

Autograph from the Chamberlain Collection, Boston 
Public Library. 
Dolly P. Madison facing 222 

From a miniature in the possession of Dr. H. M. Cutts, 
Brookline, Mass. 

Autograph from a letter kindly loaned by Dr. Cutis. 

Battle op Lake Erie facing 310 

From the painting by W. H. Powell in the Capitol at 
Washington. 



.-*. 



JAMES MADISON 



CHAPTER I 

THE VIRGINIA MADISONS 

James Madison was born on March 16, 1751, 
at Port Conway, Virginia ; he died at Montpellier, 
in that State, on June 28, 1836. Mr. John Quincy 
Adams, recalling, perhaps, the death of his own 
father and of Jefferson on the same Fourth of 
July, and that of Monroe on a subsequent anniver- 
sary of that day, may possibly have seen a gener- 
ous propriety in finding some equally appropriate 
commemoration for the death of another Virginian 
President. For it was quite possible that Virginia 
might think him capable of an attempt to conceal, 
what to her mind would seem to be an obvious 
intention of Providence : that all the children of 
the " Mother of Presidents " should be no less dis- 
tinguished in their deaths than in their lives — 
that the "other dynasty," which John Randolph 
was wont to talk about, should no longer pretend 
to an equality with them, not merely in this world, 
but in the manner of going out of it. At any rate, 



2 JAMES MADISON 

he notes the date of Madison's death, the twenty- 
eighth day of June, as "the anniversary of the 
day on which the ratification of the Convention of 
Virgfinia in 1788 had affixed the seal of James 
Madison as the father of the Constitution of the 
United States, when his earthly part sank without 
a struggle into the grave, and a spirit, bright as 
the seraphim that surround the throne of Omnipo- 
tence, ascended to the bosom of his God." There 
can be no doubt of the deep sincerity of this tri- 
bute, whatever question there may be of its gram- 
matical construction and its rhetoric, and although 
the date is erroneous. The ratification of the Con- 
stitution of the United States by the Virginia Con- 
vention was on June 25, not on June 28. It is 
the misfortune of our time that we have no living 
great men held in such universal veneration that 
their dying on common days like common mortals 
seems quite impossible. Half a century ago, how- 
ever, the propriety of such providential arrange- 
ments appears to have been recognized almost as 
one of the " institutions." It was the newspaper 
gossip of that time that a " distinguished physi- 
cian " declared that he would have kept a fourth 
ex-President alive to die on a Fourth of July, had 
the illustrious sick man been under his treatment. 
The patient himself, had he been consulted, might, 
in that case, possibly have declined to have a fatal 
illness prolonged a week to gratify the public fond- 
ness for patriotic coincidence. But Mr. Adams's 
appropriation of another anniversary answered aU 



THE VIRGINIA MADISONS 3 

the purpose, for that he made a mistake as to the 
date does not seem to have been discovered. 

It was accidental that Port Conway was the 
birthplace of Madison. His maternal grandfather, 
whose name was Conway, had a plantation at that 
place, and young Mrs. Madison happened to be 
there on a visit to her mother when her first child, 
James, was born. In the stately — not to say 
stilted — biography of him by WiUiam C. liives, 
the christened name of this lady is given as 
Eleanor. Mr. Rives may have thought it not in 
accordance with ancestral dignity that the mother 
of so distinjjuished a son should have been bur- 
dened with so commonplace and homely a name 
as Nelly. But we are afraid it is true that NeUy 
was her name. No other biographer than Mr. 
Rives, that we know of, caUs her Eleanor. Even 
Madison himself permits " Nelly " to pass under 
his eyes and from his hands as his mother's name. 

In 1833-34 there was some correspondence be- 
tween him and Lyman C. Draper, the historian, 
which includes some notes upon the Madison 
genealogy. These, the ex-President writes, were 
"made out by a member of the family," and they 
may be considered, therefore, as having his sanc- 
tion. The first record is, that " James Madison 
was the son of James Madison and Nelly Con- 
way." On such authority Nelly, and not Elea- 
nor, must be accepted as the mother's name. 
This, of course, is to be regTctted from the Rives 
point of view; but perhaps the name had a less 



4 JAMES MADISON 

familiar sound a century and a half ago ; and no 
doubt it was chosen by her parents without a 
thought that their daughter might go into history 
as the mother of a President, or that any higher 
fortune could befall her than to be the respectable 
head of a tobacco planter's family on the banks of 
the Rappahannock. 

This genealogical record further says that " his 
[Madison's] ancestors, on both sides, were not 
among the most wealthy of the country, but in 
independent and comfortable circumstances." If 
this comment was added at the ex-President's own 
dictation, it was quite in accordance with his un- 
pretentious character.^ One might venture to say 

1 Dr. Draper has kindly put into our hands the correspondence 
between himself and Mr. Madison, and we copy these genealogical 
notes in full, with the letter in which they were sent, as all that 
the ex-President had to say about his ancestry : — 

MoNTPELLiEB, February 1, 1834. 
Deab Sir, — I have received your letter of December 31st, and 
inclose a sketch on the subject of it, made out by a member of the 
family. With friendly respects, 

James Madison. 

" James Madison was the son of James Madison and Nelly Con- 
way. He was born on the 5th of March, 1751 (0. S.), at Port 
Conway, on the Rappahannock River, where she was at the time 
on a visit to her mother residing there. 

" His father was the son of Ambrose Madison and Frances 
Taylor. His mother was the daughter of Francis Conway and 
Rebecca Catlett. 

" His paternal grandfather was the son of John Madison dnd 
Isabella Minor Todd. His paternal grandmother, the daughter 
of James Taylor and Martha Thompson. 

" His maternal grandfather was the son of Edwin Conway and 



THE VIRGINIA MADISONS 5 

as much of a Northeru or a Western fanner. But 
they did not farm in Virginia ; they planted. 
Mr. Rives says that the elder James was " a large 
landed proprietor ; " and he adds, " a large landed 
estate in Virginia . . . was a mimic common- 
wealth, with its foreign and domestic relations, 
and its regular administrative hierarchy." The 
" foreign relations " were the shipping, once a 
year, a few hogsheads of tobacco to a London 
factor ; the " mimic commonwealths " were clusters 
of negro huts ; and the " administrative hierarchy " 
was the priest, who was more at home at the tavern 
or a horse-race than in the discharge of his clerical 
duties. 

As Mr. Madison had only to say of his imme- 
diate ancestors — which seems to be all he knew 
about them — that they were in "independent 
and comfortable circumstances," so he was, ap- 
parently, as little inclined to talk about himself ; 
even at that age when it is supposed that men who 
have enjoyed celebrity find their own lives the 
most agreeable of subjects. In answer to Dr. 
Draper's inquiries he wrote this modest letter, 
now for the first time published : — 

Elizabeth Thornton. His maternal grandmother, the daughter of 
John Catlett and Gaines. 

" His father was a planter, and dwelt on the estate now called 
Montpellier, where he died February 27, 1801, in the 78th year of 
his age. His mother died at the same place in 1829, February 
11th, in the 98th year of her age. 

" His grandfathers were also planters. It appeai-s that his an- 
cestors, on both sides, were not among the most wealthy of the 
country, but in independent and comfortable circumstances." 



6 JAJMES MADISON 

MoNTPKLLtEB, August 9, 1833. 

Dear Sir, — Since your letter of the 3d of June 
came to hand, mj increasing age and continued mala- 
dies, with the many attentions due from me, had caused 
a delay in acknowledging it, for which these circum- 
stances must be an apology, in your case, as I have been 
obliged to make them in others. 

You wish me to refer you to sources of printed in- 
formation on my career in life, and it would afford me 
pleasure to do so ; but my recollection on the subject is 
very defective. It occurs [to me] that there was a bio- 
graphical volume in an enlarged edition compiled by 
General or Judge Rodgers of Pennsylvania, and which 
may perhaps have included my name, among others. 
When or where it was published I cannot say. To this 
reference I can only add generally the newspapers at 
the seat of government and elsewhere during the elec- 
tioneering periods, when I was one of the objects under 
review. I need scarcely remark that a life, which has 
been so much a public life, must of course be traced in 
the public transactions in which it was involved, and 
that the most important of them are to be found in 
documents already in print, or soon to be so. 

With friendly respects, James IMadison. 

Lymak C. Draper, Lockport, N. Y. 

The genealogical statement, it will be observed, 
does not go farther back than Mr. Madison's great- 
grandfather, John. Mr. Kives supposes that this 
John was the son of another John who, as " the 
pious researches of kindred have ascertained," 
took out a patent for land about 1653 between the 
North and York rivers on the shores of Chesa- 



THE VIRGINIA MADISONS 7 

peake Bay. The same wi-iter further assumes that 
this John was descended from Captain Isaac Madi- 
son, whose name appears " in a document in the 
State Paper Office at London containing a list of 
the Colonists in 1623." From Sainsbury's Calen- 
dar ^ we learn something more of this Captain Isaac 
than this mere mention. Under date of January 
24, 1623, there is this record: "Captain Powell, 
gunner, of James City, is dead ; Capt. Nuce (?), 
Capt. Maddison, Lieut. Craddock's brother, and 
divers more of the chief men reported dead." But 
either the report was not altogether true or there 
was another Isaac Maddison, for the name ap- 
pears among the signatures to a letter dated about a 
month later — February 20 — from the governor, 
council, and Assembly of Virginia to the king. It 
is of record, also, that four months later still, on 
June 4, " Capt. Isaac and Mary Maddison " were 
before the governor and council as witnesses in 
the case of Greville Pooley and Cicely Jordan, 
between whom there was a " supposed contract of 
marriage," made " three or four days after her 
husband's death." But the lively widow, it seems, 
afterward " contracted herself to Will Ferrar be- 
fore the governor and council, and disavowed the 
former contract," and the case therefore became so 
complicated that the court was " not able to decide 

1 Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, 1574-lGCO, Pre- 
served in the State Paper Department of Uer Majesty's Public 
Record Office, edited by W. Noel Sainsbury, Esq., etc. London, 
1860. 



8 JAMES MADISON 

so nice a difference." What Captain Isaac and 
Mary Maddison knew about the matter the record 
does not tell us ; but the evidence is conclusive 
that if there was but one Isaac Maddison in Vir- 
ginia in 1623 he did not die in January of that 
year. Probably there was but one, and he, as 
Rives assumes, was the Captain Madyson of whose 
"achievement," as Rives calls it, there is a brief 
narrative in John Smith's " General History of 
Virginia." 

Besides the record in Sainsbury's Calendar of 
the rumor of the death of this Isaac in Virginia, 
in January, 1623, his signature to a letter to the 
king in February, and his appearance as a wit- 
ness before the council in the case of the widow 
Jordan, in June, it appears by Hotten's Lists of 
colonists, taken from the Records in the English 
State Paper Department, that Captain Isacke 
Maddeson and Mary Maddeson were living in 
1624 at West and Sherlow Hundred Island. The 
next year, at the same place, he is on the list of 
dead ; and there is given under the same date 
" The muster of Mrs. Mary Maddison, widow, aged 
80 years." Her family consisted of " Katherin 
Layden, child, aged 7 years," and two servants. 
Katherine, it may be assumed, was the daughter 
of the widow Mary and Captain Isaac, and their 
only child. These " musters," it should be said, 
appear always to have been made with great care, 
and there is therefore hardly a possibility that a 
son, if there were one, was omitted in the numer- 



THE VIRGINIA MADISONS 9 

ation of the widow's family, while the name and 
age of the little girl, and the names and ages of 
the two servants, the date of their arrival in Vir- 
ginia, and the name of the ship that each came in, 
are all carefully given. The conclusion is inevita- 
ble : Isaac Maddison left no male descendants, and 
President Madison's earliest ancestor in Virginia, 
if it was not his great-grandfather John, must be 
looked for somewhere else. 

Mr. Rives knew nothing of these Records. His 
first volume was published before either Sainsbury's 
Calendar or Hotten's Lists ; and the researches on 
which he relied, " conducted by a distinguished 
member of the Historical Society of Virginia " in 
the English State Paper Office, were, so far as 
they related to the Madisons, incomplete and worth- 
less. The family was not, apparently, " coeval with 
the foundation of the Colony," and did not arrive 
" among the earliest of the emigrants in the New 
World." That distinction cannot be claimed for 
James Madison, nor is there any reason for sup- 
posing that he believed it could be. He seemed 
quite content with the knowledge that so far back 
as his great-grandfather his ancestors had been 
respectable people, " in independent and comforta- 
ble circumstances." 

Of his own generation there were seven children, 
of whom James was the eldest, and alone became 
of any note, except that the rest were reputable and 
contented people in their stations of life. A hun- 
dred years ago the Arcadian Virginia, for which 



10 JAMES MADISON 

Governor Berkeley had thanked God so devoutly, 
— when there was not a free school nor a press in 
the province, — had passed away. The elder Madi- 
son resolved, so Mr. Rives tells us, that his children 
should have advantages of education which had not 
been within his own reach, and that they shoiUd all 
enjoy them equally. James was sent to a school 
where he could at least begin the studies which 
should fit him to enter college. Of the master 
of that school we know nothing except that he 
was a Scotchman, of the name of Donald Robert- 
son, and that many years afterward, when his son 
was an applicant for office to Madison, then sec- 
retary of state, the pupil gratefully remembered 
his old master, and indorsed upon the application 
that " the writer is son of Donald Robertson, the 
learned Teacher in King and Queen County, Vir- 
gmia. 

The preparatory studies for college were finished 
at home under the clergyman of the parish, the 
Rev. Thomas Martin, who was a member of Mr. 
Madison's family, perhaps as a private tutor, per- 
haps as a boarder. It is quite likely that it was 
by the advice of this gentleman — who was from 
New Jersey — that the lad was sent to Princeton 
instead of to William and Mary College in Vir- 
ginia. At Princeton, at any rate, he entered at 
the age of eighteen, in 1769 ; or, to borrow Mr. 
Rives' s eloquent statement of the fact, " the young 
Virginian, invested with the toga virilis of anti- 
cipated manhood, we now see launched on that 



THE VIRGINIA MADISONS 11 

disciplinary career which is to form him for the 
future struggles of life." 

One of his biographers says that he shortened 
his collegiate term by taking in one year the 
studies of the junior and senior years, but that 
he remained another twelve-month at Princeton 
for the sake of acquiring Hebrew. On his return 
home he undertook the instruction of his younger 
brothers and sisters, while pursuing his own 
studies. Still another biographer asserts that he 
began inunediately to read law, but Rives gives 
some evidence that he devoted himself to theology. 
This and his giving himself to Hebrew for a year 
point to the ministry as his chosen profession. 
But if we rightly interpret his own words, he had 
little strength or spirit for a pursuit of any sort. 
His first " struggle of life " was apparently with 
ill-health, and the career he looked forward to was 
a speedy journey to another world. In a letter to 
a friend (November, 1772) he writes : " I am too 
dull and infirm now to look out for extraordinary 
things in this world, for I think my sensations for 
many months have intimated to me not to expect 
a long or healthy life ; though it may be better 
with me after some time ; but I hardly dare ex- 
pect it, and therefore have little spirit or elasticity 
to set about anything that is difficult in acquiring, 
and useless in possessing after one has exchanged 
time for eternity." In the same letter he assures 
his friend that he approves of his choice of history 
and morals as the subjects of his winter studies ; 



12 JAMES MADISON 

but, he adds, " I doubt not but you design to sea- 
son them with a little divinity now and then, which, 
like the philosopher's stone in the hands of a good 
man, will turn them and every lawful acquirement 
into the nature of itself, and make them more pre- 
cious than fine gold." 

The bent of his mind at this time seems to 
have been decidedly religious. He was a diligent 
student of the Bible, and, Mr. Rives says, "he 
explored the whole history and evidences of 
Christianity on every side, through clouds of wit- 
nesses and champions for and against, from the 
fathers and schoolmen down to the infidel philo- 
sophers of the eighteenth century." So wide a 
range of theological study is remarkable in a youth 
of only two or three and twenty years of age ; but, 
remembering that he was at this time living at 
home, it is even more remarkable that in the house 
of an ordinary planter in Virginia a hundred and 
twenty years ago could be found a library so rich 
in theology as to admit of study so exhaustive. 
But in Virginia history nothing is impossible. 

His studies on this subject, however, whether 
wide or limited, bore good fruit. Religious intol- 
erance was at that time common in his immediate 
neighborhood, and it aroused him to earnest and 
open opposition ; nor did that opposition cease till 
years afterward, when freedom of conscience was 
established by law in Virginia, largely by his la- 
bors and influence. Even in 1774, when all the 
colonies were girding themselves for the coming 



THE VIRGINIA MADISONS 13 

revolutionary conflict, he turned aside from a dis- 
cussion of the momentous question of the hour, in 
a letter to his friend ^ in Philadelphia, and ex- 
claimed with unwonted heat : — 

" But away with politics ! . . . That diabolical, hell- 
conceived principle of persecution rages among some ; 
and, to their eternal infamy, the clergy can furnish 
their quota of imps for such purposes. There are at 
this time in the adjacent country not less than five or 
six well-meaning men in close jail for publishing their 
rehgious sentiments, which in the main are very ortho- 
dox. I have neither patience to hear, talk, or think of 
anything relative to this matter ; for I have squabbled 
and scolded, abused and ridiculed so long about it to ht- 
tle purpose that I am without common patience." 

These are stronger terms than the mild-tem- 
pered Madison often indulged in. But he felt 
strongly. Probably he, no more than many other 
wiser and older men, understood what was to be 
the end of the political struggle which was getting 
so earnest ; but evidently in his mind it was reli- 
gious rather than civil liberty which was to be 
guarded. "If the Church of England," he says 
in the same letter, " had been the established and 
general religion in all the Northern colonies, as it 
has been among us here, and uninterrupted har- 
mony had prevailed throughout the continent, it is 

1 The letters to a friend, from -which we have quoted, were 
written to William Bradford, Jr., of Philadelphia, afterward at- 
torney-general in Washington's administration. They are given 
in full in The Writings of James Madison, vol. i. 



14 JAMES MADISON 

clear to me that slavery and subjection might and 
would have been gradually insinuated among us." 
He congratulated his friend that they had not 
permitted the tea-ships to break cargo in Philadel- 
phia ; and Boston, he hoped, would " conduct mat- 
ters with as much discretion as they seem to do 
with boldness." These things were interesting 
and important ; but " away with politics ! Let me 
address you as a student and philosopher, and not 
as a patriot." Shut o£E from any contact with the 
stirring incidents of that year in the towns of the 
coast, he lost something of the sense of proportion. 
To a young student, solitary, ill in body, perhaps 
a trifle morbid in mind, a little discontented that 
all the learning gained at Princeton could find 
no better use than to save schooling for the six 
youngsters at home, — to him it may have seemed 
that liberty was more seriously threatened by 
that outrage, under his own eyes, of " five or six 
well-meaning men in close jail for publishing their 
religious sentiments," than by any tax which Par- 
liament could contrive. Not that he overestimated 
the importance of this wrong, but that he under- 
estimated the importance of that. He was not 
long, however, in getting the true perspective. 



CHAPTER n 

THE YOUNG STATESMAN 

Madison's place, both from temperament and 
from want of physical vigor, was in the council, 
not in the field. One of his early biographers 
says that he joined a military company, raised in 
his own county, in preparation for war ; but this, 
there can hardly be a doubt, is an error. He 
speaks with enthusiasm of the " high-spirited " 
volunteers, who came forward to defend " the honor 
and safety of their country ; " but there is no in- 
timation that he chose for himself that way of 
showing his patriotism. But of the Committee of 
Safety, appointed in his county in 1774, he was 
made a member, — perhaps the youngest, for he 
was then only twenty-three years old. 

Eighteen months afterward he was elected a 
delegate to the Virginia Convention of 1776, and 
this he calls " my first entrance into public life." 
It gave him also an opportimity for some distinc- 
tion, which, whatever may have been his earlier 
plans, opened public life to him as a career. The 
first work of the convention was to consider and 
adopt a series of resolutions instructing the Vir- 
ginian delegates in the Continental Congress, then 



16 JAMES MADISON 

in session at Philadelphia, to urge an immediate 
declaration of independence. The next matter was 
to frame a Bill of Rights and a Constitution of 
government for the province. Madison was made 
a member of the committee to which this latter sub- 
ject was referred. One question necessarily came 
up for consideration which had for him a peculiar 
interest, and in any discussion of which he, no 
doubt, felt quite at ease. This was concerning 
religious freedom. An article in the proposed De- 
claration of Rights provided that " all men should 
enjoy the fullest toleration in the exercise of reli- 
gion, according to the dictates of conscience, un- 
punished and unrestrained by the magistrate, unless, 
under color of religion, any man disturb the peace, 
happiness, or safety of society." It does not 
appear that Mr. Madison offered any objection to 
the article in the committee ; but when the report 
was made to the convention he moved an amend- 
ment. He pointed out the distinction between the 
recognition of an absolute right and the toleration 
of its exercise ; for toleration implies the power 
of jurisdiction. He proposed, therefore, instead of 
providing that " all men should enjoy the fullest 
toleration in the exercise of religion," to declare 
that " all men are equally entitled to the full and 
free exercise of it according to the dictates of con- 
science ; " and that " no man or class of men ought, 
on account of religion, to be invested with peculiar 
emoluments or privileges, nor subjected to any 
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THE YOUNG STATESMAN 17 

religion, the preservation of equal liberty and the 
existence of the state be manifestly endangered." 
This distinction between the assertion of a right 
and the promise to grant a privilege, only needed 
to be pointed out. But Mr. Madison evidently 
meant more ; he meant not only that religious free- 
dom should be assured, but that an Established 
Church, which, as we have already seen, he believed 
to be dangerous to liberty, should be prohibited. 
Possibly the convention was not quite ready for 
this latter step ; or possibly its members thought 
that, as the greater includes the less, should free- 
dom of conscience be established a state church 
would be impossible, and the article might there- 
fore be stripped of supererogation and verbiage. 
At any rate, it was reduced one half, and finally 
adopted in this simpler form : " That religion, or 
the duty we owe to our Creator, and the manner of 
discharging it, can be directed only by reason and 
conviction, not by force or violence ; and, there- 
fore, all men are equally entitled to the free exer- 
cise of religion according to the dictates of con- 
science." Thus it stands to this day in the Bill of 
Eights of Virginia, and of other States which sub- 
sequently made it their own, possessing for us the 
personal interest of being the first public work of 
the coming statesman. 

Madison was thenceforth for the next forty 
years a public man. Of the first Assembly under 
the new Constitution he was elected a member. 
For the next session also he was a candidate, but 



18 JAMES MADISON 

failed to be returned for a reason as creditable to 
him as it was uncommon then, whatever it may be 
now, in Virs:inia. " The sentiments and manners 
of the parent nation," Mr. Rives says, still pre- 
vailed in Virginia, " and the modes of canvassing 
for popidar votes in that country were generally 
practiced. The people not only tolerated, but ex- 
pected and even required, to be courted and treated. 
No candidate who neglected those attentions could 
be elected." But the times, Mr. Madison thought, 
seemed " to favor a more chaste mode of conduct- 
ing elections," and he " determined to attempt, by 
an example, to introduce it." He failed signally ; 
" the sentiments and manners of the parent nation " 
were too much for him. He solicited no votes ; 
nobody got drunk at his expense ; and he lost the 
election. An attempt was made to contest the 
return of his opponent on the ground of corrupt 
influence, but, adds Mr. Rives, in his sesquipeda- 
lian measure, " for the want of adequate proof to 
sustain the allegations of the petition which in such 
cases it is extremely difficult to obtain with the 
requisite precision, the proceeding was unavailing 
except as a perpetual protest, upon the legislative 
records of the country, against a dangerous abuse, 
of which one of her sons, so qualified to serve her, 
and destined to be one of her chief ornaments, was 
the early though temporary victim." Mr. Rives 
does not mean that Mr. Madison was for a little 
while in early life the victim of a vicious habit, 
but that he lost votes because he would do nothing 
to encourage it in others. 



THE YOUNG STATESMAN 19 

The country lost a good representative, but 
their loss was his gain. The Assembly immedi- 
ately elected him a member of the governor's 
council, and in this position he so grew in public 
favor that, two years afterward (1780), he was 
chosen as a delegate to the Continental Congress. 
He was stiU under thirty, and had he been even 
a more brilliant young man than he really was, it 
woiUd not have been to his discredit had he only 
been seen for the next year or two, if seen at all, 
in the backgTOund. He had taken his seat among 
men, every one of whom, probably, was his senior, 
and among whom were many of the wisest men 
in the country, not " older " merely, but " better 
soldiers." 

If not the darkest, at least there was no darker 
year in the Revolution than that of 1780. AVithin 
a few days of his arrival at Philadelphia, Madison 
wrote to Jefferson — then governor of Virginia — 
his opinion of the state of the country. It was 
gloomy but not exaggerated. The only bright spot 
he could see was the chance that Clinton's expe- 
dition to South Carolina might be a failure ; but 
within little more than a month from the date 
of his letter, Lincoln was compelled to surrender 
Charleston, and the whole country south of Vir- 
ginia seemed about to fall into the hands of the 
enemy. Could he have foreseen that calamity, 
his apprehensions might have been changed to 
despair ; for he writes : — 



20 JAMES MADISON 

" Our army threatened with an immediate alternative 
of disbanding or living on free quarter ; the public trea- 
sury empty ; public credit exhausted, nay, the private 
credit of purchasing agents employed, I am told, as far 
as it will bear ; Congress complaining of the extortion of 
the people, the people of the improvidence of Congress, 
and the army of both ; our affairs requiring the most 
mature and systematic measures, and the urgency of 
occasions admitting only of temporary expedients, and 
these expedients generating new difficulties ; Congress 
recommending plans to the several States for execution, 
and the States separately rejudging the expediency of 
such plans, whereby the same distrust of concurrent 
exertions that had damped the ardor of patriotic indi- 
viduals must produce the same effect among the States 
themselves ; an old system of finance discarded as incom- 
petent to our necessities, an untried and precarious one 
substituted, and a total stagnation in prospect between 
the end of the former and the operation of the latter. 
These are the outlines of the picture of our public situa- 
tion. I leave it to your own imagination to fill them up." 

He saw more clearly, perhaps, after the experi- 
ence of one session of Congress, the true cause of 
all these troubles ; at any rate, he was able, in a 
letter written in November of that year (1780), to 
state it tersely and explicitly. The want of money, 
he wrote to a friend, " is the source of all our pub- 
lic difficulties and misfortunes. One or two mil- 
lions of guineas properly applied would diffuse 
vigor and satisfaction throughout the whole mili- 
tary department, and would expel the enemy from 
every part of the United States." 



THE YOUNG STATESMAN 21 

But nobody knew better than he the difficulty 
of raising funds except by borrowing abroad, and 
that this was a precarious reliance. There must 
be some sort of substitute for money. In specific 
taxation he had no faith. Such taxes, if paid at 
all, would be paid, virtually, in the paper currency 
or certificates of the States, and these had already 
fallen to the ratio of one hundred to one ; they 
kept on falling till they reached the rate of a 
thousand to one, and then soon became altogether 
worthless. When the estimate for the coming year 
was under consideration, he proposed to Congress 
that the States should be advised to abandon the 
issue of this paper currency. " It met," he says, 
" with so cool a reception that I did not much urge 
it." The sufficient answer to the proposition was, 
that "the practice was manifestly repugnant to 
the Acts of Congress," and as these were disre- 
garded and could not be enforced, a mere remon- 
strance would be quite useless. The Union was 
little more than a name under the feeble bonds of 
the Confederation, and each State was a law unto 
itself. Not that in this case there was much rea- 
sonable ground for complaint ; for what else could 
the States do ? Where there was no money there 
must be something to take its place ; a promise to 
pay must be accepted instead of payment. The 
paper answered a temporary purpose, though it 
was plain that in the end it would be good for 
nothing. 

The evil, however, was manifestly so great that 



22 JAMES MADISON 

there was only the more reason for trying to miti- 
gate it, if it could not be cured. Madison, like 
the rest, had his remedy. He proposed, in a let- 
ter to one of his colleagues, that the demand for 
army supplies should be duly apportioned among 
the people, their collection rigorously enforced, and 
payment made in interest-bearing certificates, not 
transferable, but to be redeemed at a specified 
time after the war was over. The plan would un- 
doubtedly have put a stop to the circulation of 
a vast volume of paper money if the producers 
would have exchanged the products of their labor 
for certificates, useless at the time of exchange, 
and having only a possible prospective value in 
case of the successful termination of an uncertain 
war. Patriotic as the people were, they neither 
would nor could have submitted to such a law, nor 
had Congress the power to enforce it. But Mr. 
Madison did not venture apparently to urge his 
plan beyond its suggestion to his colleague. 

Why the Assembly of Virginia should have pro- 
posed to elect an extra delegate to Congress, early 
in 1781, is not clear, unless it be that one of the 
number, Joseph Jones, being also a member of 
the Assembly, passed much of his time in Richmond. 
It does not appear, however, that the delegate 
extraordinary was ever sent, perhaps because it 
was known to Mr. Madison's friends that it would 
be a mortification to him. There was certainly no 
good reason for any distrust of either his ability 
or his industry. One coidd hardly be otherwise 



THE YOUNG STATESMAN 23 

than industrious who had it in him — if the story 
be true — to take but three hours out of the twenty- 
four for sleep during the last year of his college 
course, that he might crowd the studies of two 
years into one. He seemed to love work for its 
own sake, and he was a striking example of how 
much virtue there is in steadiness of pursuit. Not 
that he had at this time any special goal for his 
ambition. His aim seemed to be simply to do the 
best he could wherever he might be placed ; to 
discharge faithfully, and to the best of such ability 
as he had, whatever duty was intrusted to him. 
His report of the proceedings in the congressional 
session of 1782-83, and the letters written during 
those years and the year before, show that he was 
not merely diligent but absorbed in the duties of 
his office. 

He was more faithful to his constituents than 
his constituents sometimes were to him. Any- 
thing that might happen at that period for want 
of money can hardly be a matter of surprise ; but 
Virginia, even then, should have been able, it 
would seem, to find enough to enable its members 
of Congress to pay their board-bills. He com- 
plains gently in his Addisonian way of the incon- 
venience to which he was put for want of funds. 
" I cannot," he writes to Edmund Randolph, " in 
any way make you more sensible of the importance 
of your kind attention to pecuniary remittances for 
me, than by informing you that I have for some 
time past been a pensioner on the favor of Hayne 



24 JAMES MADISON 

Solomon, a Jew broker." A montli later he writes, 
that to draw biUs an Virginia has been tried, " but 
in vain ; " nobody would buy them ; and he adds, 
"I am relapsing fast into distress. The case of 
my brethren is equally alarming." Within a week 
he again writes : " I am almost ashamed to reiterate 
my wants so incessantly to you, but they begin to 
be so urgent that it is impossible to suppress them." 
But the Good Samaritan, Solomon, is still an un- 
f ailinsr reliance. " The kindness of our little friend 
in Front Street, near the coffee house, is a fund 
which will preserve me from extremities ; but I 
never resort to it without great mortification, as he 
obstinately rejects all recompense. The price of 
money is so usurious that he thinks it ought to be 
extorted from none but those who aim at profitable 
speculations. To a necessitous delegate he gratui- 
tously spares a supply out of his private stock." 
It is a pretty picture of the simplicity of the early 
days of the Republic. Between the average modem 
member and the money-broker, under such circum- 
stances, there would lurk, probably, a contract for 
carrying the mails or for Indian supplies. 

Relief, however, came at last. An appeal was 
made in a letter to the governor of Virginia, 
which was so far public that anybody about the 
executive office might read it. The answer to 
this letter, says Mr. Madison, " seems to chide our 
urgency." But there soon came a bill for two 
hundred dollars, which, he adds, " very seasonably 
enabled me to replace a loan by which I had an- 



THE YOUNG STATESMAN 25 

ticipated it. About three Kimdred and fifty more 
(not less) would redeem me completely from the 
class of debtors." It is to be hoped it came with- 
out further chiding.* 

The young member was not less attentive to his 
congi'Bssional duties because of these little diffi- 
culties in the personal ways and means. Military 
movements seem, without altogether escaping his 
attention, to have interested him the least. In his 
letters to the public men at home, which were 
meant in some degree to give such information as 
in later times the newspapers supplied, questions 
relating to army affairs, even news directly from 
the army, occupy the least space. They are not 
always, for that reason, altogether entertaining 
reading. One would be glad, occasionally, to ex- 
change their sonorous and rounded periods for any 
expression of quick, impulsive feeling. " I return 
you," he writes to Pendleton, " my fervent congrat- 
ulations on the glorious success of the combined 
armies at York and Gloucester, We have had 
from the Commander-in-Chief an official report of 
the fact," — and so forth and so forth; and then 
for a page or more is a discussion of the condition 
of British possessions in the East Indies, that " rich 

^ The members of Congress were paid, at that time, by the 
States they represented. Virginia allowed her delegates their 
family expenses, including three servants and four horses, house 
rent and fuel, two dollars a mile for travel, and twenty dollars a 
day when in attendance on Congress. The members were required 
to render an account quarterly of their household expenses, and 
the State paid them when she had any money. 



26 JAMES MADISON 

source of their commerce and credit, severed from 
them, perhaps forever;" of "the predatory conquest 
of Eustatia;" and of the "relief of Gibraltar, which 
was merely a negative advantage;" — all to show 
that "it seems scarcely possible for them much 
longer to shut their ears against the voice of 
peace." There is not a word in all this that is not 
quite true, pertinent, reflective, and becoming a 
statesman ; but neither is there a word of sympa- 
thetic warmth and patriotic fervor which at that 
moment made the heart of a whole people beat 
quicker at the news of a great victory, and in the 
hope that the cause was gained at last. 

All the letters have this preternatural solemnity, 
as if each was a study in style after the favorite 
Addisonian model. One wonders if he did not, in 
the privacy of his own room and with the door 
locked, venture to throw his hat to the ceiling and 
give one hurrah under his breath at the discom- 
fiture of the vain and self-sufficient Cornwallis. 
But he seems never to have been a young man. 
At one and twenty he gravely warned his friend 
Bradford not "to suffer those impertinent fops 
that abound in every city to divert you from your 
business and philosophical amusements. . . . You 
will make them respect and admire you more by 
showing your indignation at their follies, and by 
keeping them at a becoming distance." It was his 
loss, however, and our gain. He was one of the 
men the times demanded, and without whom they 
would have been quite different times and followed 



THE YOUNG STATESMAN 27 

by quite different results. The sombre hue of his 
life was due partly, no doubt, to natural temperar 
ment ; partly to the want of health in his earlier 
manhood, which led him to believe that his days 
were numbered ; but quite as much, if not more 
than either, to a keen sense of the responsibility 
resting upon those to whom had fallen the conduct 
of public affairs. 



CHAPTER III 

m CONGRESS 

Madison had grown steadily in the estimation 
of his colleagues, as is shown, especially in 1783, 
by the frequency of his appointment upon impor- 
tant committees. He was a member of that one 
to which was intrusted the question of national 
finances, and it is plain, even in his own modest 
report of the debates of that session, that he took 
an important part in the long discussions of the 
subject, and exercised a marked influence upon the 
result. The position of the government was one 
of extreme difficulty. To tide over an immediate 
necessity, a further loan had been asked of France 
in 1782, and bills were drawn against it without 
waiting for acceptance. It was not very likely, 
but it was not impossible, that the bills might go 
to protest ; but even should they be honored, so 
irregular a proceeding was a humiliating acknow- 
ledgment of poverty and weakness, to which some 
of the delegates, Mr. Madison among them, were 
extremely sensitive. 

The national debt altogether was not less than 
forty million dollars. To provide for the inter- 
est on this debt, and a fund for expenses, it was 



IN CONGRESS 29 

necessary to raise about three million dollars annu- 
ally. But the sum actually contributed for the 
support of the confederate government in 1782 was 
only half a million dollars. This was not from 
any absolute inability on the part of the people to 
pay more ; for the taxes before the war were more 
than double that sum, and for the first three or 
four years of the war it was computed that, with 
the depreciation of paper money, the people sub- 
mitted to an annual tax of about twenty million 
dollars. The real difficulty lay in the character of 
the Confederation. Congress might contrive but 
it could not command. The States might agree, or 
they might disagree, or any two or more of them 
might only agree to disagree ; and they were more 
likely to do either of the last two than the first. 
There was no power of coercion anywhere. All 
that Congress could do was to try to frame laws 
that would reconcile differences, and bring thirteen 
supreme governments upon some common ground 
of agreement. To distract and perplex it still 
more, it stood face to face with a well-disciplined 
and veteran army which might at any moment, 
could it find a leader to its mind, march upon 
Philadelphia and deal with Congress as Cromwell 
dealt with the Long Parliament. There were some 
men, probably, in that body, who would not have 
been sorry to see that precedent followed. Wash- 
ington might have done it if he would. Gates 
probably would have done it if he coiUd. 

To avert this threatened danger ; to contrive 



30 JAMES MADISON 

taxation that should so far please the taxed that 
they would refrain from using the power in their 
hands to escape altogether any taxation for general 
purposes, — was the knotty problem this Congress 
had to solve in order to save the Confederacy from 
dissolution. There was no want of plans and ex- 
pedients ; neither were there wanting men in that 
body who clearly understood the conditions of the 
problem, and how it might be solved, and whose 
aim was direct and unfaltering. Chief among them 
were Hamilton, Wilson, Ellsworth, and Madison. 
However wrong-headed, or weak, or intemperate 
others may have been, these men were usually 
found together on important questions ; differing 
sometimes in details, but unmoved by passion or 
prejudice, and strong from reserved force, they 
overwhelmed their opponents at the right moment 
with irresistible argument and by weight of char- 
acter. 

In the discussion of the more important ques- 
tions Mr. Madison is conspicuous — conspicuous 
without being obtrusive. A reader of the debates 
can hardly fail to be struck with his familiarity 
with English constitutional law, and its application 
to the necessities of this offshoot of the English 
people in setting up a government for themselves. 
The stores of knowledge he drew upon must needs 
have been laid up in the years of quiet study at 
home before he entered upon public life. For 
there was no congressional library then where a 
member could " cram " for debate ; and — though 



IN CONGRESS 31 

Philadelphia already had a fair public library — 
the member who was armed at all points must 
have equipped himself before entering Congress, 
In this respect Madison probably had no equal, 
except Hamilton, and possibly Ellsworth. To the 
need of such a library, however, he and others 
were not insensible. As chairman of a committee 
he reported a list of books " proper for the use 
of Congress," and advised their purchase. The 
report declared that certain authorities upon inter- 
national law, treaties, negotiations, and other ques- 
tions of legislation were absolutely indispensable, 
and that the want of them "was manifest in 
several Acts of Congress." But the Congress was 
not to be moved by a little thing of that sort. 

The attitude of his own State sometimes embar- 
rassed him in the satisfactory discharge of his duty 
as a legislator. The earliest distinction he won 
after entering Congress was as chairman of a 
committee to enforce upon Mr. Jay, then minister 
to Spain, the instructions to adhere tenaciously to 
the right of navigation on the Mississippi in his 
negotiations for an alliance with that power. Mr. 
Madison, in his dispatch, maintained the American 
side of the question with a force and clearness to 
which no subsequent discussion of the subject ever 
added anything. He left nothing unsaid that 
could be said to sustain the right either on the 
ground of expediency, of national comity, or of 
international law ; and his arguments were not 
only in accordance with his own convictions, but 



32 JAMES MADISON 

with the instructions of the Assembly of his own 
State. It was a question of deep interest to Vir- 
ginia, whose western boundary at that time was 
the Mississippi. But Virginia soon afterward 
shifted her position. The course of the war in 
the Southern States in the winter of 1780-81 
aroused in Georgia and the Carolinas renewed 
anxiety for an alliance with Spain. The fear of 
their people was that, in case of the necessity for 
a sudden peace while the British troops were in 
possession of those States or parts of them, they 
might be compelled to remain as British territory 
under the application of the rule of uti j^ossidetis. 
It was urged, therefore, that the right to the 
Mississippi should be surrendered to Spain, if it 
were made the condition of an alliance. In defer- 
ence to her neighbors, Virginia proposed that Mr. 
Jay should be reinstructed accordingly. 

Mr. Madison was not in the least shaken in his 
conviction. With him, the question was one of 
right rather than of expediency. But not many 
at that time ventured to doubt that representatives 
must implicitly obey the instructions of their con- 
stituents. He yielded ; but not till he had ap- 
pealed to the Assembly to reconsider their decision. 
The scale was turned ; in deference to the wishes 
of the Southern States new orders were sent to 
Mr. Jay. Mr. Madison, however, had not long to 
wait for his justification. When the immediate 
danger, which had so alarmed the South, had 
passed away, Virginia returned to her original 



IN CONGRESS 33 

position. New instructions were again sent to her 
representatives, and Mr. Jay was once more ad- 
vised by Congress that on the Mississippi ques- 
tion his government would yield nothing. 

On another question, two years afterward, Mr. 
Madison refused to accept a position of inconsist- 
ency in obedience to instructions which his State 
attempted to force upon him. No one saw more 
clearly than he how absolutely necessary to the 
preservation of the Confederacy was the settle- 
ment of its financial affairs on some sound and 
just basis ; and no one labored more earnestly and 
more intelligently than he to bring about such a 
settlement. Congress had proposed in 1781 a tax 
upon imports, each State to appoint its own col- 
lectors, but the revenue to be paid over to the 
federal government to meet the expenses of the 
war. Khode Island alone, at first, refused her 
assent to this scheme. An impost law of five per 
cent, upon certain imports and a specific duty 
upon others for twenty -five years were an essential 
part of the plan of 1783 to provide a revenue to 
meet the interest on the public debt and for other 
general purposes. That Rhode Island would con- 
tinue obstinate on this point was more than prob- 
able ; and the only hope of moving her was that 
she should be shamed or persuaded into compli- 
ance by the combined influence of all the other 
States. 

Mr. Madison was as bitter as he could ever be 
in his reflections upon that State, whose course, 



34 JAMES MADISON 

lie thought, showed a want of any sense of honor 
or of patriotism. Virginia, he argued, should re- 
buke her by making her own compliance with the 
law the more emphatic, as an example for all the 
rest. But Virginia did exactly the other thing. 
At the moment when debate upon the revenue 
law was the most earnest, and the prospect of car- 
rying it the most hopeful ; when a committee ap- 
pointed by Congress had already started on their 
journey northward to expostulate with, and if pos- 
sible conciliate, Rhode Island, — at that critical 
moment came news from Virginia that she had 
revoked her assent of a previous session to the im- 
post law. This was equivalent to instructing her 
delegates in Congress to oppose any such measure. 
The situation was an awkward one for a represent- 
ative who had put himself among the foremost of 
those who were pushing this policy, and who had 
been making invidious reflections upon a State 
which opposed it. The rule that the will of the 
constituents should govern the representative, he 
now declared, had its exceptions, and here was a 
case in point. He continued to enforce the neces- 
sity of a general law to provide a revenue, though 
his arguments were no longer pointed with the 
selfishness and want of patriotism shown by the 
people of Rhode Island. In the end his firmness 
was justified by Virginia, who again shifted her 
position when the new act was submitted to her. 

The operation of the law was limited to five and 
twenty years. This Hamilton opposed and Madi- 



IN CONGRESS 35 

son supported ; and in this difference some of 
the biographers of both see the foreshadowing of 
future parties. But it is more likely that neither 
of those statesmen thought of their difference of 
opinion as difference of principle. The question 
was, whether anything could be gained by a defer- 
ence to that party which, both felt at that time, 
threatened to throw away, in adhering to the state- 
rights doctrine, all that was gained by the Revolu- 
tion. They were agreed upon the necessity of a 
general law, supreme in all the States, to meet 
the obligation of a debt contracted for the general 
good. Unless — wrote Madison in February — 
" unless some amicable and adequate arrangements 
be speedily taken for adjusting all the subsisting 
accounts and discharging the public engagements, 
a dissolution of the Union will be inevitable." He 
was willing, therefore, to temporize, that the neces- 
sary assent of the State to such a law might be 
gained. Nobody hoped that the public debt would 
be paid off in twenty-five years ; but to assume to 
levy a federal tax in the States for a longer period, 
or till the debt should be discharged, might so 
arouse state jealousy that it would be impossible 
to get an assent to the law anywhere. If the 
law for twenty-five years should be accepted, the 
threatened destruction of the government wovdd be 
escaped for the present, and it might, at the end 
of a quarter of a century, be easy to reenact the 
law. At any rate, the evil day would be put off. 
This was Madison's reasoning. 



36 JAMES MADISON 

But Hamilton did not believe in putting off a 
crisis. He had no faith in the permanency of the 
government as then organized. If he were right, 
what was the use or the wisdom of postponing a 
catastrophe till to-morrow? A possible escape 
from it might be even more difficult to-morrow 
than to-day. The essential difference between 
the two men was, that Madison only feared what 
Hamilton positively knew, or thought he knew. 
It was a difference of faith. Madison hoped some- 
thing would turn up in the course of twenty-five 
years. Hamilton did not believe that anything 
good could turn up under the feeble rule of the 
Confederation. He would have presented to the 
States, then and there, the question, Would they 
surrender to the confederate government the right 
of taxation so long as that government thought it 
necessary ? If not, then the Confederation was a 
rope of sand, and the States had resolved them- 
selves into thirteen separate and independent gov- 
ernments. Therefore he opposed the condition of 
twenty-five years, and voted against the bill. 

Nevertheless, when it became the law he gave it 
his heartiest support, and was appointed one of a 
committee of three to prepare an address, which 
Madison wrote, to commend it to the acceptance 
of the States. Indeed, the last serious effort made 
on behalf of the measure was made by Hamilton, 
who used all his eloquence and influence to in- 
duce the legislature of his own State to ratify it. 
It was the law against his better judgment ; but 



IN CONGRESS 37 

being the law, he did his best to secure its recogni- 
tion. But it failed of hearty support in most of 
the States, while in New York and Pennsylvania 
compliance with it was absolutely refused. No- 
thing, therefore, would have been lost had Hamil- 
ton's firmness prevailed in Congress ; and nothing 
was gained by Madison's deference to the doctrine 
of state rights, unless it was that the question of 
a " more perfect Union " was put off to a more 
propitious time, when a reconstruction of the gov- 
ernment under a new federal Constitution was pos- 
sible. Meanwhile Congress borrowed the money 
to pay the interest on money already borrowed ; 
the confederate government floundered deeper 
and deeper into inextricable difficulties ; the thir- 
teen ships of state drifted farther and farther apart, 
with a fair promise of a general wreck. 

But the bill contained another compromise 
which was not temporary, and once made could 
not be easily unmade. Agreed to now, it became 
a condition of the adoption of the federal Con- 
stitution four years later; and there, as nobody 
now is so blind as not to see, it was the source of 
infinite mischief for nearly a century, till a third 
reconstruction of the Union was brought about by 
the war of 1861-65. The Articles of Confedera- 
tion required that " all charges of war and all 
other expenses that shall be incurred for the com- 
mon defense or general welfare " should be borne 
by the States in proportion to the value of their 
lands. It was proposed to amend this provision 



38 JAMES MADISON 

of the Constitution, and for lands substitute popu- 
lation, exclusive of Indians not taxed, as the basis 
for taxation. But here arose at once a new and 
perjDlexing question. There were, chiefly in one 
portion of the country, about 750,000 " persons 
held to service or labor," — the euphuism for ne- 
gro slaves which, evolved from some tender and 
sentimental conscience, came into use at this pe- 
riod. Should these, recognized only as property 
by state law, be counted as 750,000 persons by 
the laws of the United States ? ^ Or should they, 
in the enumeration of population, be reckoned, in 
accordance with the civil law, as pro nullis, jyro 
mortuis, pro quadrupedibus, and therefore not to 
be counted at all ? Or should they, as those who 
owned them insisted, be counted, if included in the 
basis of taxation, as fractions of persons only ? 

The South contended that black slaves were not 
equal to white men as producers of wealth, and 
that, by counting them as such, taxation would 
be unequal and unjust. But whether counted as 
units or as fractions of units, the slaveholders in- 
sisted that representation should be according to 
that enumeration. The Northern reply was that, 
if representation was to be according to population, 
the slaves being included, then the slave States 
would have a representation of property, for which 
there would be no equivalent in States where there 
were no slaves ; but if slaves were enumerated as 

1 In some of the States slaves were reckoned as " chattels per- 
sonal ; " in others as " real estate." 



IN CONGRESS 39 

a basis of representation, then that enumeration 
should also be taken to fix the rate of taxation. 

Here, at any rate, was a basis for an interesting- 
deadlock. One simple way out of it would have 
been to insist upon the doctrine of the civil law ; 
to count the slaves only as pro quadrupedihus^ to 
be left out of the enumeration of population as 
being no part of the State, as horses and cattle 
were left out. But the bonds of union hung 
loosely upon the sisters a hundred years ago ; 
there was not one of them who did not think she 
was able to set up for herself and take her place 
among the nations as an independent sovereign ; 
and it is more than likely that half of them would 
have refused to wear those bonds any longer on 
such a condition. There was no apprehension then 
that slavery was to become a power for evil in the 
State ; but there was intense anxiety lest the States 
should fly asunder, form partial and local unions 
among neighbors, or become entangled in alli- 
ances with foreign nations, at the sacrifice of all, 
or much, that was gained by the Revolution. To 
make any concession, therefore, to slavery for the 
sake of the Union was hardly held to be a conces- 
sion. 

The curious student of history, however, who 
loves to study those problems of what might have 
happened if events that did not happen had come 
to pass, will find ample room for speculation in 
the possibilities of this one. Had there been no 
compromise, it is as easy to see now, as it was easy 



40 JAMES MADISON 

to foresee then, how quickly the feeble bond of 
union would have snapped asunder. But never- 
theless, if the North had insisted that the slaves 
should neither be counted nor represented at all, 
or else should be reckoned in full and taxes levied 
accordingly, the consequent dissolution of the Con- 
federacy might have had consequences which then 
nobody dreamed of. For it is not impossible, it 
is not even improbable, that, in that event, the 
year 1800 would have seen slavery in the process 
of rapid extinction everywhere except in South 
Carolina and Georgia. Had the event been post- 
poned in those States to a later period, it would 
only have been because they had already found in 
the cultivation of indigo and rice a profitable use 
for slave-labor, which did not exist in the other 
slave States, where the supply of slaves was rap- 
idly exceeding the demand. There can hardly be 
a doubt that, in case of the dissolution of the Con- 
federacy, the Northern free-labor States would 
soon have consolidated into a strong union of their 
own. There was every reason for hastening it, 
and none so strong for hindering it as those which 
were overborne in the union which was actually 
formed soon afterward between the free-labor and 
slave-labor States. To such a Northern union the 
border States, as they sloughed off the old system, 
would have been naturally attracted ; nor can 
there be a doubt that a federal union so formed 
would ultimately have proved quite as strong, 
quite as prosperous, quite as happy, and quite as 



IN CONGRESS 41 

respectable among the nations, as one purchased 
by compromises with slavery, followed, as those 
compromises were, by three quarters of a century 
of bitter political strife ending in a civil war. 

But the Northern members were no less ready to 
make compromises than Southern members were 
to insist upon them, these no more understanding 
what they conceded than those understood what 
they gained ; for the future was equally concealed 
from both. A committee reported that two blacks 
should be rated as one free man. This was un- 
satisfactory. To some it seemed too large, to 
others too small. Other ratios, therefore, were 
proposed, — three to one, three to two, four to one, 
and four to three. Mr. Madison at last, "in 
order," as he said, "to give a proof of the sincer- 
ity of his professions of liberality," — and doubt- 
less he meant to be liberal, — proposed " that 
slaves should be rated as five to three." His 
motion was adopted, but afterward reconsidered. 
Four days later — April 1st — Mr. Hamilton re- 
newed the proposition, and it was carried, Mad- 
ison says, " without opposition." ^ The law on this 
point was the precedent for the mischievous three 
fifths rule of the Constitution adopted four years 
later. 

^ J. C. Hamilton says, in his History of the BepubliCy that " the 
motion prevailed by a vote of all the States excepting Massacha- 
setts and Rhode Island." Bnt his understanding^ of the question 
is in other respects incorrect, — misunderstood, one may hope, 
rather than misstated lest he should give credit, for what he con- 
sidered a meritorious action, to Madison. 



42 JAMES MADISON 

Youth finally overtook the young man during 
the last winter of his term in Congress, for he fell 
in love. But it was an unfortunate experience, 
and the outcome of it doubtless gave a more sombre 
hue than ever to his life. His choice was not a 
wise one. Probably Mr. Madison seemed a much 
older man than he really was at that period of his 
life, and to a young girl may have appeared really 
advanced in years. At any rate, it was his un- 
happy fate to be attached to a young lady of more 
than usual beauty and of irrepressible vivacity, 
— Miss Catherine Floyd, a daughter of General 
William Floyd of Long Island, N. Y., who was one 
of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, 
and who was a delegate to Congress from 1774 to 
1783. Miss Catherine's sixteenth birthday was in 
April of the latter year ; Madison was double her 
age, as his thirty-second birthday was a month 
earlier. His suit, however, was accepted, and they 
became engaged. But it was the father rather 
than the daughter who admired the suitor ; for the 
older statesman better understood the character, 
and better appreciated the abilities, of his young 
colleague, and predicted a brilliant career for him. 
The girl's wisdom was of another kind. The future 
career which she foresaw and wanted to share 
belonged to a young clergyman, who — according 
to the reminiscences of an aged relative of hers — 
"hung round her at the harpsichord," and made 
love in quite another fashion than that of the 



IN CONGRESS 43 

solemn statesman whom the old general so ap- 
proved of. It is altogether a pretty love story, and 
one's sympathy goes out to the lively young beauty, 
who was thinking of love and not of ambition, as 
she turned from the old young gentleman, discuss- 
ing, with her wise father, the public debt and the 
necessity of an impost, to that really young young 
gentleman who knew how to hang over the harpsi- 
chord, and talked more to the purpose with his 
eyes than ever the other could with his lips. There 
is a tradition that she was encouraged to be thus 
on with the new love before she was off with the 
old, by a friend somewhat older than herself ; and 
possibly this maturer lady may have thought that 
Madison would be better mated with one nearer his 
own age. At any rate, the engagement was broken 
off before long by the dismissal of the older lover, 
much to the father's disappointment, and in due 
time the young lady married the other suitor. 
There is no reason that I know of for supposing 
that she ever regretted that her more humble home 
was in a rectory, when it might have been, in due 
time, had she chosen differently, in the White 
House at Washington, and that afterward she 
might have lived, the remaining sixteen years of 
her life, the honored wife of a revered ex-President. 
Perhaps, however, she smiled in those later years 
at the recollection of having laughed in her gay 
and thoughtless youth at her solemn lover, and 
that, when at last she dismissed him, she sealed her 



44 JAMES MADISON 

letter — conveying to him alone, it may be, some 
merry but mischievous meaning — with a bit of 
rye-dough.^ 

Mr. Rives gives a letter from Jefferson to Madi- 
son at this time, which shows that he stood in 
need of consolation from his friends. "I sincerely 
lament," Mr. Jefferson wrote in his philosophical 
way, " the misadventure which has happened, from 
whatever cause it may have happened. Should it 
be final, however, the world presents the same and 
many other resources of happiness, and you pos- 
sess many within yourself. Firmness of mind and 
unintermitting occupation wiU not long leave you 
in pain. No event has been more contrary to my 
expectations, and these were founded on what I 
thought a good knowledge of the ground. But of 
all machines ours is the most complicated and 
inexplicable." It was Solomon who said, "there 
be three things which are too wonderful for me, 
yea, four which I know not." This fourth was, 
" the way of a man with a maid." He might have 
added a fifth, — the way of a maid with a man, 
which, evidently, is what Jefferson meant. 

1 For the details, so far as they can now be recalled, of this 
single romantic incident in Mr. Madison's life, I am indebted to 
Nicoll Floyd, Esq., of Moriches, Long Island, a great-grandson of 
General William Floyd. 



CHAPTER IV 

IN THE STATE ASSEMBLY 

As the election of the same delegate to Congress 
for consecutive sessions was then forbidden by the 
law of Virginia, Mr. Madison was not returned to 
that body in 1784. For a brief interval of three 
months he made good use of his time, we are told, 
by continuing his law studies, till in the spring of 
that year he was chosen to represent his county 
in the Virginia Assembly. It may be that " the 
sentiments and manners of the parent nation," 
which he lamented seven years before, had passed 
away, and nobody now insisted upon the privilege 
of getting drunk at the candidate's expense before 
voting for him. But it is more likely that the 
electors had not changed. The difference was in 
the candidate ; they did not need to be allured to 
give their votes to a man whom they were proud to 
call upon to represent the county. Mr. Madison's 
reputation was already made by his three years in 
Congress, and he now easily took a place among 
the political leaders of his own State. 

The position was hardly less conspicuous or less 
influential than that which he had held in the 
national Congress. What each State might do 



46 JAMES MADISON 

was of quite as much importance as anything the 
federal government might or could do. Congress 
could neither open nor close a single port in Vir- 
ginia to commerce, whether domestic or foreign, 
without the consent of the State ; it could not levy 
a tax of a penny on anything, whether goods com- 
ing in or products going out, if the State objected. 
As a member of Congress, Mr. Madison might pro- 
pose or oppose any of these things ; as a member 
of the Virginia House of Delegates, he might, if 
his influence was strong enough, carry or forbid 
any or all of them, whatever might be the wishes 
of Congress. It was in the power of Virginia to 
influence largely the welfare of her neighbors, so 
far as it depended upon commerce, and indirectly 
that of every State in the Union. 

In the Assembly, as in Congress, Mr. Madison's 
aim was to increase the powers of the federal 
government, for want of which it was rapidly sink- 
ing into imbecility and contempt. " I acceded," 
he says, "to the desire of my fellow-citizens of 
the county that I should be one of its representa- 
tives in the legislature," to bring about " a rescue 
of the Union and the blessings of liberty staked 
on it from an impending catastrophe." Early in 
the session the Assembly assented to the amend- 
ment to the Articles of Confederation proposed at 
the late session of Congress, which substituted 
population for a land valuation as the basis of rep- 
resentation and of taxation. The Assembly also 
asserted that all requisitions upon the States for 



IN THE STATE ASSEMBLY 47 

the support of the general government and to pro- 
vide for the public debt should be complied with, 
and payment of balances on old accounts should 
be enforced ; and it assented to the recommenda- 
tion of Congress that that body should have power 
for a limited period to control the trade with for- 
eign nations having no treaty with the United 
States, in order that it might retaliate upon Great 
Britain for excluding American ships from her 
West India colonies. All these measures were 
designed for " the rescue of the Union," and they 
had, of course, Madison's hearty support. For it 
was absolutely essential, as he believed, that some- 
thing should be done if the Union was to be saved, 
or to be made worth saving. But there were 
obstacles on all sides. The commercial States 
were reluctant to surrender the control over trade 
to Congress ; in the planting States there was 
hardly any trade that could be surrendered. In 
Virginia the tobacco planter still clung to the old 
ways. He liked to have the English ship take his 
tobacco from the river bank of his own plantation, 
and to receive from the same vessel such coarse 
goods as were needed to clothe his slaves, with the 
more expensive luxuries for his own family, — dry 
goods for his wife and daughter ; the pipe of ma- 
deira, the coats and breeches, the hats, boots, and 
saddles for himself and his sons. He knew that 
this year's crop went to pay — if it did pay — for 
last year's goods, and that he was always in debt. 
But the debt was on running account, and did not 



48 JAMES MADISON 

matter. The London factor was skillful in charges 
for interest and commissions, and the account for 
this year was always a lien on next year's crop. 
He knew, and the planter knew, that the tobacco 
could be sold at a higher price in New York or 
Philadelphia than the factor got, or seemed to 
get, for it in London ; that the goods sent out 
in exchange were charged at a higher price than 
they could be bought for in the Northern towns. 
Nevertheless, the planter liked to see his own hogs- 
heads rolled on board ship by his own negroes at 
his own wharf, and receive in return his own boxes 
and bales shipped direct from London at his own 
order, let it cost what it might. It was a shift- 
less and ruinous system ; but the average Virginia 
planter was not over-quick at figures, nor even at 
reading and writing. He was proud of being lord 
of a thousand or two acres, and one or two hundred 
negroes, and fancied that this was to rule over, as 
Mr. Rives called it, " a mimic commonwealth, with 
its foreign and domestic relations, and its regular 
administrative hierarchy." He did not compre- 
hend that the isolated life of a slave plantation 
was ordinarily only a kind of perpetual barbecue, 
with its rough sports and vacuous leisure, where 
the roasted ox was largely wasted and not always 
pleasant to look at. There was a rude hospitality, 
where food, provided by unpaid labor, was cheap 
and abundant, and where the host was always glad 
to welcome any guest who woidd relieve him of his 
own tediousness ; but there was little luxury and 



IN THE STATE ASSEMBLY 49 

no refinement where there was almost no culture. 
Of course there were a few homes and families of 
another order, where the women were refined and 
the men educated ; but these were the exceptions. 
Society generaUy, with its bluff, loud, self-confident 
but ignorant planters, its numerous poor whites 
destitute of lands and of slaves, and its mass of 
slaves whose aim in life was to avoid work and 
escape the whip, was necessarily only one remove 
from semi-ci\alization. 

It was not easy to indoctrinate such a people, 
more arrogant than intelligent, with new ideas. 
By the same token it might be possible to lead 
them into new ways before they would find out 
whither they were going. Mr. Madison hoped to 
change the wretched system of plantation com- 
merce by a port bill, which he brought into the 
Assembly. Imposts require custom-houses, and 
obviously there could not be custom-houses nor 
even custom-of&cers on every plantation in the 
State. The bill proposed to leave open two ports 
of entry for all foreign ships. It would gTcatly 
simplify matters if all the foreign trade of the 
State could be limited to these two ports only. It 
would then be easy enough to enforce imposts, 
and the State would have something to surrender 
to the federal government to help it to a revenue, 
if, happily, the time should ever come when all 
the States should assent to that measure of salva- 
tion for the Union. Not that this was the primary 
object of those who favored this port law ; but the 



50 JAMES MADISON 

question of commerce was the question on which 
everything hinged, and its regulation in each State 
must needs have an influence, one way or the other, 
upon the possibility of strengthening, even of pre- 
serving, the Union. Everything depended upon 
reconciling these state interests by mutual conces- 
sions. The South was jealous of the North, be- 
cause trade flourished at the North and did not 
flourish at the South. It seemed as if this was at 
the expense of the South, and so, in a certain sense, 
it was. The problem was to find where the diffi- 
culty lay, and to apply the remedy. 

If commerce flourished at the North, where each 
of the States had one or two ports of entry only, 
why should it not flourish in Virginia if regulated 
in the same way ? If those centres of trade bred 
a race of merchants, who built their own ships, 
bought and sold, did their own carrying, competed 
with and stimulated each other, and encroached 
upon the trade of the South, why should not 
similar results follow in Virginia if she should 
confine her trade to two or three ports? If the 
buyer and the seller, the importer and the con- 
sumer, went to a common place of exchange in 
Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, and pro- 
sperity followed as a consequence, why should they 
not do the same thing at Norfolk? This was 
what Madison aimed to bring about by the port 
bill. But it was impossible to get it through the 
legislature till three more ports were added to the 
two which the bill at first proposed. When the 



IN THE STATE ASSEMBLY 61 

planters came to understand that such a law would 
take away their cherished privilege of trade along 
the banks of the rivers, wherever anybody chose to 
run out a little jetty, the opposition was persistent. 
At every succeeding session, till the new federal 
Constitution was adopted, an attempt was made to 
repeal the act ; and though that was not successful, 
each year new ports of entry were added. It did 
not, indeed, matter much whether the open ports 
of Virginia were two or whether they were twenty. 
There was a factor in the problem which neither 
Mr, Madison nor anybody else would take into the 
account. It was possible, of course, if force enough 
were used, to break up the traffic with English 
ships on the banks of the rivers ; but when that 
was done, commerce would follow its own laws, in 
spite of the acts of the legislature, and flow into 
channels of its own choosing. It was not possible 
to transmute a planting State, where labor was 
enslaved, into a commercial State, where labor 
must be free. 

However desirous Mr. Madison might be to 
transfer the power over commerce to the federal 
government, he was compelled, as a member of the 
Virginia legislature, to care first for the trade of 
his own State. No State could afford to neglect 
its own commercial interests so long as the thirteen 
States remained thirteen commercial rivals. It 
was becoming plainer and plainer every day that, 
while that relation continued, the less chance there 
was that thirteen petty, independent States could 



52 JAMES MADISON 

unite into one great nation. No foreign power 
would make a treaty with a government which 
could not enforce that treaty among its own people. 
Neither could any separate portion of that people 
make a treaty, as any other portion, the other side 
of an imaginary line, need not hold it in respect. 
What good was there in revenue laws, or, indeed, 
in any other laws in Massachusetts which Connec- 
ticut and Rhode Island disregarded? or in New 
York, if New Jersey and Pennsylvania laughed at 
them? or in Virginia, if Maryland held them in 
contempt ? 

But Mr. Madison felt that, if he could bring 
about a healthful state of things in the trade of 
his own State, there was at least so much done 
towards bringing about a healthful state of things 
in the commerce of the whole country. There 
came up a practical, local question which, when 
the time came, he was quick to see had a logical 
bearing upon the general question. The Poto- 
mac was the boundary line between Virginia and 
Maryland ; but Lord Baltimore's charter gave to 
Maryland jurisdiction over the river to the Vir- 
ginia bank ; and this right Virginia had recog- 
nized, claiming only for herself the free navigation 
of the Potomac and the Pocomoke. Of course the 
laws of neither State were regarded when it was 
worth while to evade them ; and nothing was easier 
than to evade them, since to the average human 
mind there is no privilege so precious as a facility 
for smuggling. Nobody, at any rate, seems to have 



IN THE STATE ASSEMBLY 53 

thought anything about the matter till it came 
under Madison's observation after his return home 
from Congress. To him it meant something more 
than mere evasion of state laws and frauds on the 
state revenue. The subject fell into line with his 
reflections upon the looseness of the bonds that 
held the States together, and how unlikely it was 
that they would ever grow into a respectable or 
prosperous nation while their present relations 
continued. Virtually there was no maritime law 
on the Potomac, and hardly even the pretense of 
any. What could be more absurd than to provide 
ports of entry on one bank of a river, while on the 
other bank, from the source to the sea, the whole 
country was free to all comers? If the laws of 
either State were to be regarded on the opposite 
bank, a treaty was as necessary between them as 
between any two contiguous states in Europe. 

Madison wrote to Jefferson, who was now a 
delegate in Congress, pointing out this anomalous 
condition of things on the Potomac, and suggest- 
ing that he should confer with the Maryland del- 
egates upon the subject. The proposal met with 
Jefferson's approbation ; he sought an interview 
with Mr. Stone, a delegate from Maryland, and, 
as he wrote to Madison, " finding him of the same 
opinion, [I] have told him I would, by letters, 
bring the subject forward on our part. They will 
consider it, therefore, as originated by this con- 
versation." Why " they " should not have been 
permitted to " consider it as originated " from 



54 JAMES MADISON 

Madison's suggestion that Jefferson should have 
such a conversation is not quite plain ; for it was 
Madison, not Jefferson, who had discovered that 
here was a wrong that ought to be righted, and 
who had proposed that each State shoidd appoint 
commissioners to look into the matter and apply a 
remedy. So, also, so far as subsequent negotia- 
tion on this subject had any influence in bringing 
about the Constitutional Convention of 1787, it 
was only because Mr. Madison, having suggested 
the first practical step in the one case, seized an 
opportune moment in that negotiation to suggest 
a similar practical step in the other case. As it is 
so often said that the Annapolis Convention of 
1786 was the direct result of the discussion of the 
Potomac question, it is worth while to explain 
what they really had to do with each other. 

The Virginia commissioners were appointed early 
in the session on Mr. Madison's motion. Maryland 
moved more slowly, and it was not till the spring 
of 1785 that the commissioners met. They soon 
found that any efficient jurisdiction over the Poto- 
mac involved more interests than they, or those 
who appointed them, had considered. Existing 
difficulties might be disposed of by agreeing upon 
uniform duties in the two States, and this the com- 
missioners recommended. But when the subject 
came before the Maryland legislature it took a 
wider range. 

The Potomac Company, of which Washington 
was president, had been chartered only a few 



IN THE STATE ASSEMBLY 55 

months before. The work it proposed to do was 
to make the upper Potomac navigable, and to con- 
nect it by a good road with the Ohio River. This 
was to encourage the settlement of Western lands. 
Another company was chartered about the same 
time to connect the Potomac and Delaware by a 
canal, where interstate traffic would be more im- 
mediate. Pennsylvania and Delaware must neces- 
sarily have a deep interest in both these projects, 
and the Maryland legislature proposed that those 
States be invited to appoint commissioners to act 
with those whom Maryland and Virginia had 
abeady appointed to settle the conflict between 
them upon the question of jurisdiction on the Po- 
tomac. Then it occurred to somebody : if four 
States can confer, why should not thirteen ? The 
Maryland legislature thereupon suggested that all 
the States be invited to send delegates to a con- 
vention to take up the whole question of American 
commerce. 

"While this was going on in Maryland, the Vir- 
ginia legislature was considering petitions from 
the principal ports of the State praying that some 
remedy might be devised for the commercial evils 
from which they were all suffering. The port bill 
had manifestly proved a failure. It was only a 
few weeks before that Madison had complained, 
in a letter to a friend, that " the trade of the coun- 
try is in a most deplorable condition ; " that the 
most " shameful frauds " were committed by the 
English merchants upon those in Virginia, as well 



56 JAMES MADISON 

as upon the planters who shipped their own to- 
bacco ; that the difference in the price of tobacco 
at Philadelphia and in Virginia was from eleven 
shillings to fourteen shillings in favor of the 
Northern ports ; and that " the price of merchan- 
dise here is, at least, as much above, as that of to- 
bacco is below, the Northern standard." He T7as 
only the more confirmed in his opinion that there 
was no cure for these radical evils except to sur- 
render to the confederate government complete 
control over commerce. The debate upon these 
petitions was hot and long. It brought out the 
strongest men on both sides, Madison leading 
those who wished to give to Congress the power 
to regulate trade with foreign countries when no 
treaty existed ; to make uniform commercial laws 
for all the States ; and to levy an impost of five 
per cent, on imported merchandise, as a provision 
for the public debt and for the support of the 
federal government generally. A committee, of 
which he was a member, at length reported instruc- 
tions to the delegates of the State in Congress to 
labor for the consent of all the States to these pro- 
positions. But in Committee of the "Whole the 
resolutions were so changed and qualified — espe- 
cially in limiting to thirteen years the period for 
which Congress was to be intrusted with a power 
so essential to the existence of the government — 
that the measure was given up by its friends as 
hopeless. 

But before the report was disposed of Mr. Madi- 



IN THE STATE ASSEMBLY 67 

son prepared a resolution, to be ofifered as a sub- 
stitute, with tlie hope of reaching the same end in 
another way. This resolution provided for the 
appointment of five commissioners, — Madison to 
be one of them, — " who, or any three of whom, 
shall meet such commissioners as may be appointed 
in the other States of the Union, at a time and 
place to be agreed on, to take into consideration 
the trade of the United States ; to examine the 
relative situations and trade of said States ; to con- 
sider how far a uniform system in their commercial 
regidations may be necessary to their common 
interest and their permanent harmony ; and to 
report to the several States such an act, relative 
to this great object, as, when unanimously ratified 
by them, will enable the United States, in Con- 
gress, effectually to provide for the same." This 
he was careful not to offer himself, but, as he says, 
it was " introduced by Mr. Tyler, an influential 
member, who, having never served in Congress, 
had more the ear of the House than those whose 
services there exposed them to an imputable bias." 
He adds that " it was so little acceptable that it 
was not then persisted in." 

About the same time the action of the Maryland 
legislature on the Potomac question, and the report 
of the Potomac commissioners, came up for con- 
sideration. Mr. Madison said afterward that, as 
Maryland thought the concurrence of Pennsylvania 
and Delaware were necessary to the regulation of 
trade on that river, so those States would, proba- 



68 JAMES MADISON 

bly, wish to ask for the concurrence of their neigh- 
bors in any proposed arrangement. " So apt and 
forcible an illustration," he adds, " of the necessity 
of an uniformity throughout all the States could 
not but favor the passage of a resolution which 
proposed a convention having that for its object." 

As one of the Potomac commissioners, he knew, 
of course, what was coming from Maryland, and 
" how apt and forcible an illustration " it would 
seem, when it did come, of that resolution which 
he had written and had induced Mr. Tyler to offer. 
It did not matter that the resolution had been at 
the moment " so little acceptable," and therefore 
" not then persisted in." It was where it was sure, 
in the political slang of our day, to do the most 
good. And so it came about. All that Maryland 
had proposed, growing out of the consideration 
of the Potomac question, the Virginia legislature 
acceded to. Then, on the last day of the session, 
the Madison-Tyler resolution was taken from the 
table, where it had lain quietly for nearly two 
months, and passed. If some, who had been con- 
tending all winter against any action which should 
lead to a possibility of strengthening the federal 
government, failed to see how important a step 
they had taken to that very end ; if any, who 
were fearful of federal usurpation and tenacious of 
state rights, were blind to the fact that the resolu- 
tion had pushed aside the Potomac question and 
put the Union question in its place, Mr. Madison, 
we may be sure, was not one of that number. He 



IN THE STATE ASSEMBLY 59 

had gained that for which he had been striving for 
years. 

The commissioners appointed by the resolution 
soon came together. They appointed Annapolis 
as the place^ and the second Monday of the follow- 
ing September (1786) as the time, of the proposed 
national convention ; and they sent to all the other 
States an invitation to send delegates to that con- 
vention. 

On September 11 commissioners from Virginia, 
Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New 
York assembled at Annapolis. Others had been 
appointed by North Carolina, Rhode Island, Mas- 
sachusetts, and New Hampshire, but they were not 
present. Georgia, South Carolina, Maryland, and 
Connecticut had taken no action upon the subject. 
As five States only were represented, the commis- 
sioners " did not conceive it advisable to proceed 
on the business of their mission," but they adopted 
an address, written by Alexander Hamilton, to be 
sent to all the States. 

All the represented States, the address said, had 
authorized their commissioners " to take into con- 
sideration the trade and commerce of the United 
States ; to consider how far an uniform system in 
their commercial intercourse and regulations might 
be necessary to their common interest and perma- 
nent harmony." But New Jersey had gone far- 
ther than this ; her delegates were instructed " to 
consider how far an imiform system in their com- 
mercial regulations and other important matters 



60 JAMES MADISON 

might be necessary to the common interest and 
permanent harmony of the several States." This, 
the commissioners present thought, " was an im- 
provement on the original plan, and will deserve to 
be incorporated into that of a future convention." 
They gave their reasons at length for this opinion, 
and, in conclusion, urged that commissioners from 
all the States be appointed to meet in convention 
at Philadelphia on the second Monday of the fol- 
lowing May (1787), "to devise such further pro- 
vision^ as shall appear to them necessary to render 
the Constitution of the federal government ade- 
quate to the exigencies of the Union." 

In the course of the winter delegates to this 
convention were chosen by the several States. 
Virginia was the first to choose her delegates; 
Madison was among them, and at their head was 
George Washing-ton. 



CHAPTER V 
IN THE VIRGINIA LEGISLATURE 

That the Annapolis Convention ever met to 
make smooth the way for the more important one 
which came together eight months afterward and 
framed a permanent Constitution for the United 
States was unquestionably due to the persistence 
and the political adroitness of Mr. Madison. But 
it was not exceptional work. The same diligence 
and devotion to public duty mark the whole of 
this period of three years through which he con- 
tinued a member of the state legislature. As 
chairman of the judiciary committee he reduced 
with much labor the old colonial statutes to a body 
of laws befitting the condition of free citizens 
in an independent State. From his first to his 
last session he contended, though without success, 
for the faith of treaties and the honest payment 
of debts. The treaty with England provided that 
there should be "no lawful impediment on either 
side to the recovery of debts heretofore con- 
tracted." The legislature notified Congress that 
it should disregard this provision, on the plea 
that in relation to "slaves and other property" 
it had not been observed by Great Britain. Mr. 



62 JAMES MADISON 

Madison did not then know that — as he said three 
years later — " the infractions [of the treaty] on 
the part of the United States preceded even the 
violation on the other side in the instance of the 
negroes." He maintained, nevertheless, that the 
settlement of the difficulty, if it had any real 
foundation, belonged to Congress, the party to the 
treaty, and not to a State which had surrendered 
the treaty-making power ; and that in common 
honesty one planter was not relieved from his 
obligation to pay a London merchant for goods 
and merchandise received before the war, because 
other planters had not been paid for the negroes 
and horses they had lost when the British troops 
invaded Virginia. At each of the three sessions 
of the legislature, while he was a member, he 
tried to bring that body to adopt some line of 
conduct which should not — to use his own words 
— " extremely dishonor us and embarrass Con- 
gress." It was useless ; the repudiators were 
quite deaf to any appeals either to their honor 
or their patriotism. 

On another question both he and his State were 
more fortunate. Religious freedom had to be once 
more fought for, and he was quick to come to the 
defense of a right which had first called forth his 
youthful enthusiasm. Two measures were brought 
forward from session to session to secure for the 
church the support of the state. The first was a 
bill for the incorporation of religious societies ; 
but when it was pushed to its final passage it pro- 



IN THE VIRGINIA LEGISLATURE 63 

vided for the incorporation of Episcopal churches 
only. For this Mr. Madison consented to vote, 
though with reluctance, in the hope that the church 
party would be so far satisfied with this measure 
as to abstain from pushing another which was still 
more objectionable. 

He was disappointed. Naturally those who had 
carried their first point were the more, not the 
less, anxious for further success. Now it was in- 
sisted that there should be a universal tax "for 
the support of teachers of the Christian religion." 
The tax-payer was to be permitted to name the 
religious society for the support of which he pre- 
ferred to contribute. If he declined this volun- 
tary acquiescence in the law, the money would be 
used in aid of a school ; but from the tax itself 
none were to be exempt on any pretext. Madison 
was quick to see in such a law the possibility of 
religious intolerance, of compulsory uniformity 
enforced by the civil power, and of the suppres- 
sion of any freedom of conscience or opinion. 
The act did not define who were and who were 
not " teachers of the Christian religion," and that 
necessarily would be left to the courts to decide. 
A state church would be the inevitable conse- 
quence; for it was not to be supposed that any 
dominant sect would rest till it secured the recog- 
nition by law of its own denomination as the sole 
representative of the Christian religion. To ex- 
pect anything else was to ignore the teachings of 
all history. 



64 JAMES MADISON 

The burden of opposition and debate fell, at 
first, almost solely upon Madison. Some of the 
wisest and best men of the State were slow to see, 
as he saw, that religious freedom was in danger 
from such legislation. There was, it was said, a 
sad falling-o£E in public morality as indifference 
to religion increased. There was no cure, it was 
declared, for prevalent and growing corruption 
except in the culture of the religious sentiment, 
and the teachers of religion, therefore, must be 
upheld and supported. But granting all this, 
Madison saw that the proposed remedy would be 
to give, not bread but a stone, and a stone that 
would be used in return as a weapon. It was 
impossible to regulate religious belief by act of the 
Assembly, and therefore it was worse than foolish 
to try. 

It was due to him that the question was post- 
poned from one session to the next. A copy of 
the bill was sent, meanwhile, into every county 
of the State for the consideration of the people, 
and that was aided by a " Memorial and Remon- 
strance," written by Madison, which was circulated 
everywhere for signature, in readiness for presenta- 
tion to the next legislature. The bill, the memo- 
rial said, would be " a dangerous abuse of power," 
and the signers protested against it with unanswer- 
able arguments, taking for a starting-point the 
assertion of the BiU of Rights, " that religion, or 
the duty we owe to our Creator, and the manner 
of discharging it, can be directed only by reason 



IN THE VIRGINIA LEGISLATURE 65 

and conviction, not by force or violence." It is 
not at all improbable that many signed this remon- 
strance, not so much because they believed it to 
be true as because it was a protest against a tax ; 
that others were more moved by jealousy of the 
power of the Episcopal Church than they were by 
anxiety to protect religious liberty outside of their 
own sects. But whatever the motives, the move- 
ment was too formidable to be disregarded. It 
was made a test question in the election of mem- 
bers for the legislature of 1785-86 ; at that session 
the bill for the support of religious teachers was 
rejected, and in place of it was passed " an act for 
establishing religious freedom," written by Jeffer- 
son seven years before. This provided " that no 
man shall be compelled to frequent or support any 
religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, 
nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or 
burthened in his body or goods, nor shall other- 
wise suffer on account of his religious opinions or 
belief ; but that all men shall be free to profess, 
and by argument maintain, their opinions in mat- 
ters of religion, and that the same shall in no 
wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capaci- 
ties." 1 

^ With how much interest Jeflferson watched the progress of this 
controversy he showed iu his letters from Paris. In February, 
1786, he wrote to Madison : " I thank you for the communica- 
tion of the remonstrance against the assessment. Mazzei, who is 
now in Holland, promised me to have it published in the Leyden 
Gazette. It will do us great honor. I wish it may be aa much 
approved by our Assembly as by the wisest part of Europe." 



66 JAMES MADISON 

In the memorial and remonstrance Madison had 
said : " If this freedom be abused, it is an offense 
against God, not against man. To God, therefore, 
not to man, must an account of it be rendered." 
If the people of Virginia did not clearly compre- 
hend this doctrine in all its length and breadth 
a hundred years ago, it is not quite easy to say 
who were then, or who are now, at liberty to throw 
stones at them. The assertion of the broadest 
religious freedom was no more new then than it 
is true that persecution for opinion's sake is now 
only an ancient evil. It was not till fifty years 
after Virginia had refused to tax her citizens for 
the support of religious teachers that Massachu- 
setts repealed the law that had long imposed a 
similar burden upon her people. 

It was in 1786, the last year of Madison's ser- 

Again, in December of the same year, he says : " The Virginia 
Act for religious freedom has been received with infinite approba- 
tion in Europe, and propagated with enthusiasm. I do not mean 
by the governments, but by the individuals who compose them. 
It has been translated into French and Italian, has been sent to 
most of the courts of Europe, and has been the best evidence of 
the falsehood of those reports which stated us to be in anarchy. 
It is inserted in the Encyclopidie, and is appearing in most of the 
publications respecting America. In fact, it is comfortable to 
see the standard of reason at length erected, after so many ages, 
during which the human mind had been held in vassalage by kings, 
priests, and nobles ; and it is honorable for us to have produced 
the first legislature who had the courage to declare that the reason 
of man may be trusted with the formation of his own opinions ! " 
This latter passage is characteristic, and many who do not like 
Jefferson will read between the lines the exultation of a man who 
was not always careful to draw the line between religious liberty 
and irreligious license. 



IN THE VIRGINIA LEGISLATURE 67 

vice in the Virginia Assembly before he returned 
to Congress, that the craze of paper money broke 
out again through all the States. The measure 
was carried in most of them, followed in the end 
by the usual disastrous consequences. Madison's 
anxiety was great lest his own State should be 
carried away by this delusion, and he led the oppo- 
sition against some petitions sent to the Assembly 
praying for an issue of currency. The vote against 
it was too large to be due altogether to his influ- 
ence ; but he gave great strength and concentration 
to the opposition. In Virginia, tobacco certificates 
supplied in some measure the want of a circulat- 
ing medium, and it was, therefore, easier there 
than in some of the other States to resist the 
clamor for a paper substitute for real money. A 
tobacco certificate at least represented something 
worth money. Madison assented to a bill which 
authorized the use of such certificates. But his 
" acquiescence," he wrote to Washington, " was 
extorted by a fear that some greater evil, under 
the name of relief to the people, would be sub- 
stituted." He was "far from being sure," he 
added, that he "did right." But no evils with 
which he had to reproach himself followed that 
measure. 

These three years of his life were probably 
among the happiest, if they were not altogether 
the happiest, in his long public career. There was 
little disappointment or anxiety, and evidently 
much genuine satisfaction as he saw how certainly 



68 JAMES MADISON 

he was gaining a high place in the estimation of 
his fellow-citizens for his devotion to the best 
interests of his native State. In the recesses of 
the legislature he had leisure for studies in which 
he evidently found great contentment. He trav- 
eled a good deal at intervals, especially at the 
North; learned much of the resources and char- 
acter of the people outside of Virginia, and became 
acquainted with the leading men among them. 
Jefferson urged him to pass a summer with him in 
Paris; and some foreign diplomatic service was 
open to him, had he expressed a willingness to 
accept it. But he preferred to know something 
more of his own country while he had the leisure ; 
and if his life was to be passed in public service, 
as now seemed probable to him, he chose, at least 
for the present, to serve his country at home, 
where he thought he was more needed, rather than 
abroad. In his orders for books sent to Jefferson 
the direction of his studies is evident. He sought 
largely for those which treated of the science of 
government; but they were not confined to that 
subject. Natural history had great charms for 
him. He was a diligent student of Buffon, and 
was anxious to find, if possible, the plates of his 
thirty-one volumes, in colors, that he might adorn 
the walls of his room with them. He made careful 
comparisons between the animals of other conti- 
nents, as described and portrayed by the naturalist, 
and similar orders in America. All new inventions 
interested him. "I am so pleased," he writes, 



IN THE VIRGINIA LEGISLATURE 69 

"with the new invented lamp that I shall not 
grudge two guineas for one of them." lie had 
seen " a pocket compass of somewhat larger diame- 
ter than a watch, and which may be carried in 
the same way. It has a spring for stopping the 
vibration of the needle when not in use. One of 
these would be very convenient in case of a ramble 
into the western country." A small telescope, he 
suggests, might be fitted on as a handle to a cane, 
which might " be a source of many little gratifica- 
tions," when " in walks for exercise or amusement 
objects present themselves which it might be mat- 
ter of curiosity to inspect, but which it was difficult 
or impossible to approach." Jefferson writes him 
of a new invention, a pedometer ; and he wants one 
for his own pocket. Trifles like these show the 
bent of his mind ; and they show a contented mind 
as well. 

While writing of important acts of the legisla- 
ture of 1785, he is careful to give other information 
in a letter to Jefferson, which is not uninteresting 
as written ninety-eight years ago, and written by 
him. 

" I. Rumsey," he says, " by a memorial to the last 
session, represented that he had invented a mechanism 
by which a boat miglit be worked with little labor, at the 
rate of from twenty-five to forty miles a day, against 
a stream running at the rate of ten miles an hour, and 
prayed that the disclosure of his invention might be pur- 
chased by the public. The apparent extravagance of his 
pretensions brought a ridicule upon them, and nothing 



70 JAMES MADISON 

was done. In the recess of the Assembly he exemplified 
his machinery to General Washington and a few other 
gentlemen, who gave a certificate of the reality and im- 
portance of the invention, which opened the ears of this 
Assembly to a second memorial. The act gives a mo- 
nopoly for ten years, reserving a right to abolish it at 
any time by paying £10,000. The inventor is soliciting 
similar acts from other States, and will not, I suppose, 
publish the secret till he either obtains or despairs of 
them." 

This intelligence was evidently not unheeded 
by Jefferson. In writing, some months after he 
received it, to a friend on the application of steam- 
power to grist-mills, then lately introduced in 
England, he adds : " I hear you are applying the 
same agent in America to navigate boats, and I 
have little doubt but that it will be applied gen- 
erally to machines, so as to supersede the use of 
water-ponds, and of course to lay open all the 
streams for navigation." Nor does Madison seem 
to have been one of those who doubted if anything 
was to come of Rumsey's invention. All this was 
less than a hundred years ago, and now there is a 
steam-ferry between New York and Europe run- 
ning about twice a day. 

In a similar letter, a year later, he is careful, 
among grave political matters, to remember and 
report to the same friend that in the sinking of a 
well in Richmond, on the declivity of a hill, there 
had been found, " about seventy feet below the 
surface, several large bones, apparently belonging 



IN THE VIRGINIA LEGISLATURE 71 

to a fish not less than the shark ; and, what is more 
singular, several fragments of potter's ware in the 
style of the Indians. Before he [the digger] 
reached these curiosities he passed through about 
fifty feet of soft blue clay." Mr. Madison had 
only just heard of this discovery, and he had not 
seen the unearthed fragments. But he evidently 
accepts the story as true in coming from " unex- 
ceptionable witnesses." He adds, as a corrobora- 
tion, that he is told by a friend from Washington 
County of the finding there, in the sinking of a 
salt-well, " of the hip-bone of the incognitum, the 
socket of which was about eight inches in diame- 
ter." Such things were peculiarly interesting to 
Jefferson, and Madison was too devoted a friend 
to him to leave them xmnoticed. But they were 
hardly less interesting to himself, though he had 
not much of Jefferson's habit of scientific investi- 
gation. That "the potter's ware in the style of 
the Indians" should be found so deeply buried 
only seems to him " singular ; " nor, indeed, is there 
any record, so far as we know, that this particular 
fact was any more suggestive to Jefferson, though 
apparently so likely to arouse his inquiring mind 
to seek for some satisfactory explanation. But 
his geological notions were too positive to admit 
even of a doubt as to the age of man. Supposing 
a Creator, he assumed that " he created the earth 
at once, nearly in the state in which we see it, fit 
for the preservation of the beings he placed on it." 
Theorist as he was himself, he had little patience 



72 JAMES MADISON 

with the other theorists who were already begin- 
ning to discover in the structure of the earth the 
evidence of successive geological eras. The differ- 
ent strata of rocks and their inclination gave him 
no trouble. He explained them all by the assump- 
tion that " rock grows, and it seems that it grows 
in layers in every direction, as the branches of 
trees grow in all directions." That evidences of 
the existence of man should be found with a super- 
imposed weight of earth seventy feet in thickness 
would present to him no difficulty. If the fact 
had specially aroused his attention he would have 
explained it in some ingenious way as the result of 
accident. 



CHAPTER VI 

PUBLIC DISTURBANCES AND ANXIETIES 

In February, 1787, Madison again took a seat 
in Congress. It was an anxious period. Shays's 
rebellion in Massachusetts had assumed rather 
formidable possibilities, and seemed not unlikely 
to spread to other States. Till this storm should 
blow over, the important business of Congress was 
to raise money and troops ; in reality, to go to the 
help of Massachusetts, if need should be, though 
the object ostensibly was to protect a handful of 
people on the frontier against the Indians. It was 
a striking instance of the imbecility of the gov- 
ernment under the Articles of Confederation, that 
it could only undertake to suppress rebellion in a 
State under the pretense of doing something else 
which came within the law. Massachusetts, it is 
true, was quite able to deal with her insurgents ; 
but when Confess convened it was not known in 
New York that Lincoln had dispersed the main 
body of them at Petersham. Nevertheless, a like 
difficulty might arise at any moment in any other 
of the States, where the strength to meet it might 
be quite inadequate. 

Madison's ideal still was, the Union before the 



74 JAMES MADISON 

States, and for the sake of the States ; the whole 
before the parts, to save the parts ; the binding 
the fagot together that the sticks might not be lost. 
" Our situation," he wrote to Edmimd Randolph 
in February, " is becoming every day more and 
more critical. No money comes into the federal 
treasury ; no respect is paid to the federal author- 
ity; and people of reflection unanimously agree 
that the existing Confederacy is tottering to its 
foundation. Many individuals of weight, particu- 
larly in the eastern district, are suspected of lean- 
ing toward monarchy. Other individuals predict 
a partition of the States into two or more confed- 
eracies. It is pretty certain that if some radical 
amendment of the single one cannot be devised and 
introduced, one or the other of these revolutions, 
the latter no doubt, will take place." 

It is not impossible that Madison himself may 
have had some faith in this suspicion that " indi- 
viduals of weight in the eastern district " were 
inclined to a monarchy. For such suspicion, how- 
ever, there could be little real foundation. There 
were, doubtless, men of weight who thought and 
said that monarchy was better than anarchy. 
There were, doubtless, impatient men then who 
thought and said, as there are impatient men now 
who think and say, that the rule of a king is better 
than the rule of the people. But there was no dis- 
loyalty to government by the people among those 
who only maintained that the English in America 
must draw from the common heritage of English 



PUBLIC DISTURBANCES AND ANXIETIES 75 

institutions and English law the material where- 
with to build up the foundations of a new nation. 
No intelligent and candid man doubts now that 
they were wise ; nor would it have been long 
doubted then, had it not so speedily become man- 
ifest that, if the stigma of " British " was once 
affixed to a political party, any appeal from pop- 
ular prejudice to reason and common sense was 
hopeless. 

There were a few persons who would have done 
away with the divisions of States and establish 
in their place a central government. Those most 
earnest in maintaining the autonomy of States 
declared that such a government was, as Luther 
Martin of Maryland called it, of " a monarchical 
nature." What else could that be but a mon- 
archy? An insinuation took on the form of a 
logical deduction and became a popular fallacy. 
Yet those most earnest for a central government 
only sought to establish a stable rule in place of 
no rule at all ; or, worse still, of the tyranny of 
an ignorant and vicious mob under the outraged 
name of democracy, into which there was danger of 
drifting. Whether their plan was wise or foolish, 
it did not mean a monarchy. Even of Shays's 
misguided followers Jefferson said : " I believe you 
may be assured that an idea or desire of returning 
to anything like their ancient government never 
entered into their heads." As Madison knew and 
said, the real danger was that the States would 
divide into two confederacies, and only by a new 



76 JAMES MADISON 

and wiser and stronger union could tliat calamity 
be averted. 

To gain the assent of most of the States to a 
convention was surmounting only the least of the 
difficulties. Three weeks before the time of meet- 
ing Madison wrote : " The nearer the crisis ap- 
proaches, the more I tremble for the issue. The 
necessity of gaining the concurrence of the con- 
vention in some system that will answer the pur- 
pose, the subsequent approbation of Congress, and 
the final sanction of the States, present a series of 
chances which would inspire despair in any case 
where the alternative was less formidable." He 
said, in the first month of the session of that body, 
that " the States were divided into different inter- 
ests, not by their difference of size, but by other 
circumstances ; the most material of which resulted 
partly from climate, but principally from the effects 
of their having or not having slaves. These two 
causes concurred in forming the great division of 
interests in the United States. It did not lie be- 
tween the large and small States. It lay between 
the Northern and Southern." 

During the earlier weeks of this session of Con- 
gress, and, indeed, for some months before, events 
had made so manifest this difference of interest, 
coincident with the difference in latitude, that 
there seemed little ground for hope that any good 
would come out of a constitutional convention. 
The old question of the navigation of the Missis- 
sippi was again agitated. The South held her 



PUBLIC DISTURBANCES AND ANXIETIES 77 

right to that river to be of much more value than 
anything she coukl gain by a closer union with the 
North, and she was quite ready to go to war with 
Spain in defense of it. On the other hand, the 
Northern States were quite indifferent to the navi- 
gation of the Mississippi, and not disposed ap- 
parently to make any exertion or sacrifice to secure 
it. Just now they were anxious to secure a com- 
mercial treaty with Spain ; but Spain insisted, as 
a preliminary condition, that the United States 
should relinquish all claim to navigation upon a 
river whose mouths were within Spanish territory. 
In the Northern mind there was no doubt of the 
value of trade with Spain ; and there was a good 
deal of doubt whether there was anything worth 
contending for in the right to sail upon a river 
running through a wilderness where, as yet, there 
were few inhabitants, and hardly any trade worth 
talking about. More than that, there was un- 
questionably a not uncommon belief at the North 
and East that the settlement and prosperity of the 
West would be at the expense of the Atlantic 
States. Perhaps that view of the matter was not 
loudly insisted upon ; but many were none the less 
persuaded that, if population was attracted west- 
ward by the hope of acquiring rich and cheap 
lands, prosperity and power would go with it. At 
any rate, those of this way of thinking were not 
inclined to forego a certain good for that which 
would profit them nothing, and might do them 
lasting harm. 



T8 JAMES MADISON 

For these reasons, spoken and unspoken, the 
Northern members of Congress were at first quite 
willing, for the sake of a commercial treaty, to 
concede to Spain the exclusive control of the Mis- 
sissippi. But to pacify the South it was proposed 
that the concession to Spain should be for only 
five and twenty years. If at the end of that period 
the navigation of the Mississippi should be worth 
contending for, the question could be reopened. 
The South was, of course, rather exasperated than 
pacified by such a proposition. The navigation of 
the river had not only a certain value to them now, 
but it was theirs by right, and that was reason 
enough for not parting with it even for a limited 
period. Concessions now would make the reasser- 
tion of the right the more difficult by and by. If 
it must be fought for, it would lessen the chance 
of success to put off the fighting five and twenty 
years. Indeed, it could not be put off, for war 
was already begun in a small way. The Spaniards 
had seized American boats on trading voyages down 
the river, and the Americans had retaliated upon 
some petty Spanish settlements. Spain, moreover, 
seemed at first no more inclined to listen to com- 
promise than the South was. 

England watched this controversy with interest. 
She had no expectation of recovering for herself 
the Floridas, which she had lost in the war of the 
Eevolution, and had finally ceded to Spain by the 
treaty of 1783; but she was quite willing to see 
that power get into trouble on the Mississippi 



PUBLIC DISTURBANCES AND ANXIETIES 79 

question, and more than willing that it should 
threaten the peace and union of the States. Her 
own boundary line west of the Alleghanies might 
possibly be extended far south of the Great Lakes, 
if the Northern and Southern States should divide 
into two confederacies ; but, apart from any lust 
of territory, she rejoiced at an}i;hing that threat- 
ened to check the growth of her late colonies. 

Fortunately, however, the question was disposed 
of, before the Constitutional Convention met at 
Philadelphia, by the failure to secure a treaty. 
The Spanish minister, Guardoqui, consented, at 
length, after long resistance, to accept as a com- 
promise the navigation of the river for five and 
twenty years ; but Mr. Jay, who was willing, could 
he have had his way, to concede anything, found 
at that stage of the negotiations he could not com- 
mand votes enough in Congress to secure a treaty 
even in that modified form. Hitherto he had 
relied upon a resolution passed by Congress in 
August, 1786, by the vote of seven Northern States 
against five Southern. This, it was assumed, 
repealed a resolution of the year before, and au- 
thorized the secretary to make a treaty. The res- 
olution of the year before, August, 1785, had been 
passed by the votes of nine States, and was in 
confirmation of a provision of the Articles of Con- 
federation declaring that " no treaties with foreign 
powers should be entered into but by the assent of 
nine States." The minority contended that such 
a resolution could not be repealed by the vote of 



80 JAMES MADISON 

only seven States, for that would be to violate a 
fundamental condition of the Articles of Confed- 
eration. It is easy to see now that there ought not 
to have been a difference among honorable men on 
such a point as that. Nevertheless Mr. Jay, sup- 
ported by some of the strongest Northern men, 
held that the votes of seven States could be made, 
in a roundabout way, to authorize an act which the 
Constitution declared should never be lawful except 
with the assent of nine States. So the secretary 
went on with his negotiations and came to terms 
with the Spanish minister. 

In April the secretary was called upon to report 
to Congress what was the position of these nego- 
tiations. Then it first publicly appeared that a 
treaty was actually agreed upon which gave up the 
right to the Mississippi for a quarter of a century. 
But it was also speedily made plain by various 
parliamentary motions that the seven votes, which 
the friends of such a treaty had relied upon, had 
fallen from seven — even could that number in 
the end have been of use — to, at best, four. The 
New Jersey delegates had been instructed not to 
consent to the surrender of the American right to 
the use of the Mississippi ; a new delegate from 
Pennsylvania had changed the vote of that State ; 
and Rhode Island had also gone over to the other 
side. "It was considered, on the whole," wrote 
Madison, " that the project for shutting the Mis- 
sissippi was at an end." 

These details are not unimportant. Forty-five 



PUBLIC DISTURBANCES AND ANXIETIES 81 

years afterward Madison wrote that " his main ob- 
ject, in returning to Congress at this time, was to 
bring about, if possible, the canceling of Mr. Jay's 
project for shutting the Mississippi." Probably it 
had occurred to nobody then that within less than 
twenty years the Province of Louisiana would 
belong to the United States, when their right to 
the navigation of the river could be no longer dis- 
puted. But so long as both its banks from the 
thirty-first degree of latitude southward to the 
Gidf remained foreign territory, it was of the last 
importance to the Southern States, whose territory 
extended to the Mississippi, that the right of way 
shoidd not be surrendered. If a treaty with Spain 
could be carried that gave up this right, and the 
Southern States should be compelled to choose 
between the loss of the Mississippi and the loss of 
the Union, there could be little doubt as to what 
their choice would be. It was not a question to 
be postponed till after the Philadelphia Convention 
had convened ; if not disposed of before, the con- 
vention might as well not meet. 

Madison's letters, while the question was pend- 
ing, show great anxiety. He was glad to know 
that the South was of one mind on this subject and 
would not yield an inch. He was quite confident 
that his own State would take the lead, as she soon 
did, in the firm avowal of Southern opinion. But 
he rejoiced that the question did not come up in 
the Virginia legislature till after the act was passed 
to send delegates to the Philadelphia Convention. 



82 JAMES MADISON 

That he looked upon as a point gained, and the 
delegates were presently appointed ; but he stiU 
despaired of any good coming of the convention, 
unless " Mr. Jay's project for shutting the Missis- 
sippi " could be first got rid of. 

In a recent work ^ Mr. Madison is represented 
as having " struck a bargain " with the Kentucky 
delegates to the Virginia Assembly, agreeing to 
speak on behalf of a petition relating to the Missis- 
sippi question, provided the delegates from Ken- 
tucky — then a part of Virginia — would vote 
for the representation of Virginia at Philadelphia. 
A " bargain " implies an exchange of one thing 
for another, and Madison had no convictions in 
favor of closing the Mississippi to exchange for a 
service rendered on behalf of a measure for which 
he wished to secure votes. Moreover, no bargain 
was necessary. It was not easy to find anybody 
in Virginia who needed to be persuaded that the 
right to the Mississippi must not be surrendered. 
Madison wrote to Monroe in October, 1786, that 
it would " be defended by the legislature with as 
much zeal as could be wished. Indeed, the only 
danger is that too much resentment may be in- 
dulged by many against the federal councils." His 
only apprehension was lest the Mississippi ques- 
tion should come up in the Assembly before the 
report from the Annapolis Convention should be 
disposed of, for if that were accepted the appoint- 

^ A History of the People of the United States. Vol. i. By John 
Bach McMaster. 



PUBLIC DISTURBANCES AND ANXIETIES 83 

ment of delegates to Philadelphia was assured. 
" I hope," he wrote to Washington in November, 
" the report will be called for before the business 
of the Mississippi begins to ferment." It hap- 
pened as he wished. " The recommendation from 
Annapolis," he wrote again a week later, " in favor 
of a general revision of the federal system was 
unanimously agreed to" (the emphasis is his own). 
He afterward reported to Jefferson " that the pro- 
ject for bartering the Mississippi to Spain was 
brought before the Assembly after the preceding 
measure had been adopted." There was neither 
delay nor difficulty in securing the unanimous con- 
sent of the Assembly to resolutions instructing the 
members of Congress to oppose any concession 
to Spain. But Madison's anxiety was not in the 
least relieved by the speedy appointment of del- 
egates to the Philadelphia Convention ; for, he 
wrote presently to Washington, " I am entirely 
convinced, from what I observe here (at Rich- 
mond), that, unless the project of Congress can 
be reversed, the hopes of carrying this State into 
a proper federal system will be demolished." He 
had already said, in the same letter, that the 
resolutions on the Mississippi question had been 
" agreed to imanimously in the House of Dele- 
gates," and three days before the letter was 
written the delegates to Philadelphia had been 
appointed. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION 

Mr. Madison is called " the Father of the Con- 
stitution." A paper written by him was laid before 
his colleagues of Virginia, before the meeting of 
the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia, 
and was made the basis of the " Virginia plan," as 
it was called, out of which the Constitution was 
evolved. In another way his name is so identified 
with it that one cannot be forgotten so long as the 
other is remembered. From that full and faith- 
ful repoi't of the proceedings of the convention, in 
which his own part was so active and conspicuous, 
we know most that we do or ever can know of the 
perplexities and trials, the concessions and triumphs, 
the acts of wisdom and the acts of weakness, of 
that body of men whose coming together time has 
shown to have been one of the important events 
in the history of mankind. 

Then it is also true that no man had worked 
harder, perhaps none had worked so hard, to bring 
the public mind to a serious consideration of affairs 
and a recognition of the necessity of reorganizing 
the government, if the States were to be held 
together. Never, it seemed, had men better reason 



THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION 85 

to be satisfied with the result of their labors when, 
a few months later, the new Constitution was 
accepted by all the States. Yet the time was not 
far distant when even Madison would be in doubt 
as to the character of this new bond of union, and 
as to what sort of government had been secured by 
it. Nor till he had been dead near thirty years 
was it to be determined what union under the 
Constitution really meant ; nor till three quarters 
of a century after the adoption of that instrument 
was the more perfect union formed, justice estab- 
lished, domestic tranquillity insured, the general 
welfare promoted, and the blessings of liberty 
secured to all the people, which by that gi'eat 
charter it was intended, in 1787, to ordain and 
establish. All the difficulties, which they who 
framed it escaped by their work, were as nothing 
to those which it entailed upon their descendants. 

Two parties went into the convention. On one 
point, of course, they were agreed, else they would 
never have come together at all, — that a united 
government under the Articles of Confederation 
was a failure, and, unless some remedy should be 
speedily devised, States with common local inter- 
ests would gravitate into separate and perhaps 
antagonistic nationalities. But the differences be- 
tween these two parties were radical, and for a 
time seemed insurmountable. One proposed sim- 
ply to repair the Articles of Confederation as they 
might overhaul a machine that was out of gear ; 
the other proposed to form an altogether new Con- 



86 JAMES MADISON 

stitution. One wanted a merely federal govern- 
ment; not, however, meaning by that term what 
the other party — soon, nevertheless, to be known 
as Federalists — were striving for, but a confed- 
eration of States, each independent of all the rest 
and supreme in its own right, while consenting to 
unite with the rest in a limited government for the 
administration of certain common interests.^ 

This idea of the independence of the States was 
a survival of the old colonial system, when each 
colony under its distinct relation to the crown had 
attained a growth of its own with its separate 
interests. Each of these colonies had become a 
State. The Revolution had secured to each, it was 
maintained, a separate independence, achieved, it 
was true, by united efforts, but not therefore bind- 
ing them together as a single nation. It was held 

^ Those who were zealous for state rights, and opposed to a 
central government, called the system they wished to reestablish 
a Federal System, — a confederacy of States. It was too conven- 
ient and probably too popular a term to be lost, and the other 
party adopted it when the new Constitution was formed. The 
Federalist was the name chosen for the volume in which were 
collected the papers, written first under the signature of " A Citi- 
zen of New York," but afterward changed to " Publius," in sup- 
port of the new Constitution, by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay. In 
one of the earlier papers Mr. Hamilton refers to the Articles of 
Confederation, which were to be superseded, as the Federal Con- 
stitution ; but in the later papers Madison is careful to refer to 
the proposed form of government as the Federal Constitution, 
and Federal soon came to be the distinguishing name of the party 
which first came into power under the new Constitution. What- 
ever may be said of Madison's other title, his right to that of 
father of the Federal party can hardly be disputed. 



THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION 87 

as a legitimate result of that doctrine that each 
State, uot the people of the State, whether many 
or few, should be represented by the same num- 
ber of votes in a federal government as they were 
under the Articles of Confederation, because such 
a government was a union of States, not of a 
people. 

AU men, it was argued, — going back to a state 
of nature, — are equally free and independent ; 
and when a government is formed every man has 
an equal share by natural right in its formation 
and in its subsequent conduct. "While numbers 
are few, every member of the State exercises his 
individual right in person, and none can rightfully 
do more than this, however wise, or powerfid, or 
rich he may be. But when government by the 
whole body of the people becomes cumbersome 
and inconvenient through increase of numbers, 
the individual citizen loses none of his rights by 
intrusting their exercise to representatives, in 
choosing and instructing whom all have an equal 
voice. So when States are united in a confederacy 
each State has the same relation to that govern- 
ment that individuals have to each other in a 
single State. They are free and equal, and none 
has a larger share of rights in the confederacy 
because its people are more numerous, or because 
it is richer or more powerful, than the rest. In 
such a confederacy it is not the individual citizen 
who is to be represented, but the individual State. 
In such a confederacv there would be the same 



88 JAMES MADISON 

representation for a State, say of ten thousand 
inhabitants, as for one of fifty thousand. This, 
it was maintained, preserved equality of suffrage 
in the equality of States ; while the representation 
of the individual citizens of the States would be 
in reality inequality of suffrage, because the au- 
tonomy of the State would be lost sight of. If 
in such a case it were asked what had become of 
the rights which the majority of forty thousand 
had inherited from nature, the answer was that 
those rights were preserved and represented in 
the state government. The difficulty, nevertheless, 
remained : how to reconcile in practice this doc- 
trine of the equal rights of States, where there 
might be a minority of persons, with the actual 
rights of the whole people where, according to the 
underlying democratic doctrine, the good of the 
whole must be decided by the larger number. 

Those who proposed only to amend the old 
Articles of Confederation, and opposed a new 
Constitution, objected that a government formed 
under such a Constitution would be not a federal 
but a national government. Luther Martin said, 
when he returned to Maryland, that the delegates 
" appeared totally to have forgot the business for 
which we were sent. . . . We had not been sent 
to form a government over the inhabitants of 
America considered as individuals. . . . That the 
system of government we were intrusted to pre- 
pare was a government over these thirteen States, 
but that in our proceedings we adopted principles 



THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION 89 

which would be right and proper only on the sup- 
position that there were no state governments at 
all, but that all the inhabitants of this extensive 
continent were in their individual capacity, with- 
out government, and in a state of nature." He 
added that " in the whole system there was but 
one federal feature, the appointment of the sena- 
tors by the States in their sovereign capacity, that 
is, by their legislatures, and the equality of suffrage 
in that branch ; but it was said that this feature 
was only federal in appearance." 

The Senate, the second house as it was called in 
the convention, was in part created, it is needless 
to say, to meet, or rather in obedience to, reasoning 
like this. There was almost nobody who would 
have been willing to abnndon the state govern- 
ments, as there was next to nobody who wanted 
a monarchy. " We were eternally troubled," 
Martin said, " with arguments and precedents 
from the British government." He could not get 
beyond the fixed notion that those whom he op- 
posed were determined to establish " one general 
government over this extensive continent, of a 
monarchical nature." If he, and those who agreed 
with him, sincerely believed this to be true, it 
was natural enough that the frequent allusions 
to British precedents, as wise rules for American 
guidance in constructing a government, should be 
looked upon as an unmistakable hankering after 
lost flesh-pots. Should the state governments be 
swept away, it might be that, in time of danger 



90 JAMES MADISON 

from without or of peril from internal dissensions, 
the country, under " a government of a monarchical 
nature," might drift back to its old allegiance. If 
those who feared, or said they feared, this were 
not quite sincere, the temptation was almost irre- 
sistible to use such arguments to arouse popular 
prejudice against political opponents. It is curi- 
ous that Madison seemed quite unconscious of 
how much the frequent allusions in his articles 
in " The Federalist " to the British Constitution 
might strengthen these accusations of the oppo- 
sition ; while he half believed that the same thing 
in others showed in them a leaning toward Eng- 
land, from which he knew that he himself was 
quite free. 

The Luther Martin protestants were too radical 
to remain in the convention to the end, when they 
saw that such a confederacy as they wanted was 
impossible. But there were not many who went 
the length they did in believing that a strong cen- 
tral government was necessarily the destruction 
of the state governments. Still fewer were those 
who would have brought this about if they could. 
That the rights of the States must be preserved 
was the general opinion and determination, and it 
was not difficult to do this by limiting the powers 
of the higher government, or federal as it soon 
came to be called, and by the organization of the 
second house, the Senate, in which all the States 
had an equal representation. The smaller States 
were satisfied with this concession, and the larger 



THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION 91 

were willing to make it, not only for the sake of 
the Union, but because of the just estimate in 
which they held the rights belonging to all the 
States alike. The real difficulty, as Madison said 
in the debate on that question, and as he repeated 
again and again after that question was settled, 
was not between the larger and smaller States, 
but between the North and the South ; between 
those States that held slaves and those that had 
none. 

Slavery in the Constitution, which has given so 
much trouble to the Abolitionists of this century, 
and indeed to everybody else, gave quite as much 
in the last century to those who put it there. Many 
of the wisest and best men of the time. Southerners 
as well as Northerners, and among them Madison, 
were opposed to slavery. They could see little 
good in it, hardly even any compensation for the 
existence of a system so full of evil. There was 
hardly a State in the Union at that time that had 
not its emancipation society ; and there was hardly 
a man of any eminence in the country who was 
not an officer, or at least a member, of such a soci- 
ety. Everywhere north of South Carolina, slavery 
was looked upon as a misfortune which it was 
exceedingly desirable to be free from at the earli- 
est possible moment ; everywhere north of Mason 
and Dixon's line, measures had already been taken, 
or were certain soon to be taken, to put an end to 
it ; and by the ordinance for the government of 
all the territory north of the Ohio Kiver it was 



92 JAMES MADISON 

absolutely prohibited by Congress in tbe same year 
in which the Constitutional Congress met. 

But it was, nevertheless, a thing to the continued 
existence of which the anti-slavery people of that 
time could consent without any violation of con- 
science. Bad as it was, unwise, wasteful, cruel, a 
mockery of every pretense of respect for the rights 
of man, they did not believe it to be absolutely 
wicked. If they had so believed, let us hope they 
would have washed their hands of it. As it was, 
it was only a question of expediency whether, for 
the sake of the Union, they should protect the sys- 
tem of slavery, and give to the slaveholders, as 
slaveholders, a certain degree of political power. 
To refuse to admit a slaveholding State into the 
Union did not occur, probably, to the most earnest 
opponent of the system ; for that would have been 
simply to say that there should be no Union. That 
was what Madison meant in saying so repeatedly 
that the real difficulty in the way was, not the dif- 
ference between the large and the small States, 
but the difference between the slaveholding and 
the non-slaveholding States. If there could be 
no conciliation on that point there could be no 
Union. 

Some hoped, perhaps, rather than believed, that 
slavery was likely to disappear ere long at the 
South as it was disappearing at the North. It is 
an impeachment of their intelligence, however, to 
suppose that they relied much upon any such hope. 
The simple truth is that slavery was then, as it 



THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION 93 

continued to be for three quarters of a century 
longer, the paramount interest of the South. To 
withstand or disregard it was not merely difficult, 
but was to brave immediate possible dangers and 
sufferings, which are never voluntarily encoun- 
tered except in obedience to the highest sense of 
duty ; or to meet a necessity, from which there was 
no manly way of escape. The sense of absolute 
duty was wanting; the necessity, it was hoped, 
might be avoided by concessions. It can only be 
said for those who made them that they did not 
see what fruitful seeds of future trouble they were 
sowing in the Constitution. 



CHAPTER VIII 

"THE compromises" 

The question with the North was, how far could 
it yield ; with the South, how far could it encroach. 
It turned mainly on representation, — on " the 
unimportant anomaly," as Mr. George Ticknor 
Curtis calls it in his " History of the Constitution," 
" of a representation of men without political rights 
or social privileges." However much they differed 
upon the subject in the convention, there was no- 
body then and there who regarded the question as 
" unimportant ; " nor was there a political event to 
happen for the coming eighty years that it did not 
influence and generally govern. There were some 
who maintained at first that the slave population 
should not be represented at all. Hamilton pro- 
posed in the first days of the convention " that the 
rights of suffrage in the national legislature ought 
to be proportioned to the number of free inhabit- 
ants." Madison was willing to concede this in 
one branch of the legislature, provided that in the 
representation in the other house the slaves were 
counted as free inhabitants. The constitution of 
the Senate subsequently disposed of that proposi- 
tion. 



"THE COMPROMISES" 95 

But why should slaves be represented at all ? 
" They are not free agents," said Patterson, a dele- 
gate to the convention from New Jersey ; they 
" have no personal liberty, no faculty of acquiring 
property, but, on the contrary, are themselves 
propert}', and, like other property, entirely at the 
will of the master. Has a man in Virginia a 
number of votes in proportion to the number of 
his slaves? And if negroes are not represented 
in the States to which they belong, why should 
they be represented in the general government? 
... If a meeting of the people was actually to 
take place in a slave State, would the slaves vote ? 
They would not. Why, then, should they be re- 
presented in a federal government?" There could 
be but one reply, but that was one which it would 
not have been wise to make. It was slave property 
that was to be represented, and this would not be 
submitted to among slaveholders as against each 
other, while yet they were a unit in insisting upon it 
in a union with those who were not slaveholders. 
Among themselves slavery needed no protection; 
their safety was in equality. But to their great 
interest every non-slaveholder was, in the nature 
of things, an enemy ; and prudence required that 
the power either to vote him down or to buy him 
up should never be wanting. It was as much a 
matter of instinct as of deliberation, for love of 
life is the first law. The truth was covered up in 
Madison's specious assertion that " every peculiar 
interest, whether in any class of citizens or any 



96 JAMES MADISON 

description of States, ought to be secured as far 
as possible." The only " peculiar " interest, how- 
ever, belonging either to citizens or States, that 
was imbedded in the Constitution, was slavery. 

So Wilson of Pennsylvania asked : " Are they 
[the slaves] admitted as citizens — then why are 
they not admitted on an equality with white citi- 
zens ? Are they admitted as property — then why 
is not other property admitted into the computa- 
tion ? " He was willing, however, to concede that 
it was a difficulty to be " overcome by the necessity 
of compromise." 

Never, probably, in the history of legislation, 
was there a more serious question debated. Com- 
promise is ordinarily understood to mean an 
adjustment by mutual concessions, where there 
are rights on both sides. Here it meant whether 
the side which had no shadow of right whatever 
to that which it demanded would consent to take 
a little less than the whole. It was the kind of 
compromise made between the bandit and his 
victim when the former decides that he will not 
put himself to the trouble of shooting the other, 
and will even leave him his shirt. It was not 
difficult to miderstand that horses and cattle could 
be justly counted only where property was to be 
the basis of representation. Yet the slaves, who 
were counted, were, in the eye of the law, either 
personal property or real estate, and were no 
more represented as citizens than if they also had 
gone upon aU fours. Their enumeration, never- 



"THE COMPROMISES" 97 

theless, was carried, and it so increased the repre- 
sentative power of their masters that inequality 
of citizenship became the fundamental principle of 
the government. This, of course, was to form an 
oligarchy, not a democracy. Practically the gov- 
ernment was put in the hands of a class, and 
there it remained from the moment of the adoption 
of the Constitution to the rebellion of 1860 ; while 
that class, including those of so little consequence 
as to own only a slave or two, in its best estate, 
probably never exceeded ten per centum of the 
whole people. 

There was, if one may venture to say so, a 
singular confusion in the minds of the venerable 
fathers of the republic on this subject. They 
could not quite get rid of the notion that the 
slaves, being human, ought to be included in the 
enumeration of population, notwithstanding that 
their enumeration as citizens must necessarily dis- 
appear in their representation as chattels. Slaves, 
as slaves, were the wealth of the South, as ships, 
for example, were the wealth of the North; but, 
being human, the mind was not shocked at having 
the slaves reckoned as population in fixing the 
basis of representation, though in reality they only 
represented the masters' ownership. But nobody 
would have been at a loss to see the absurdity 
of counting three fifths of the Northern ships as 
population. Even a Webster Whig of sixty-five 
years later could, perhaps, have understood that 
that was something more than an " unimportant 



98 JAMES MADISON 

anomaly." There was no clearer-headed man in 
the convention than Gouverneur Morris; yet he 
said that he was " compelled to declare himself 
reduced to the dilemma of doing injustice to the 
Southern States or to human nature, and he must 
do it to the former." C. C. Pinckney of South 
Carolina declared that he was " alarmed " at such 
an avowal as that. Yet had the question been one 
of counting three fifths of the Northern ships in 
the enumeration of population, Morris would have 
discovered no " dilemma," and Pinckney nothing 
to be " alarmed " at. So palpable an outrage on 
common sense would have been merely laughed at 
by both. 

In reply to Pinckney, however, Morris grew 
bolder. " It was high time," he said, " to speak 
out." He came there " to form a compact for the 
good of America. He hoped and believed that all 
would enter into such compact. If they would 
not, he was ready to join with any States that 
would. But as the compact was to be voluntary, 
it is in vain for the Eastern States to insist on 
what the Southern States will never agree to. 
It is equally vain for the latter to require what 
the other States can never admit, and he verily 
believed the people of Pennsylvania will never 
agree to a representation of negroes ; " of negroes, 
he meant, counted as human beings, not for their 
own representation, but, as ships might be comited, 
for the increased representation of those who held 
them as property. The next day he " spoke out " 




^n^^l^^ /^ 



tir-u^ 4yr>^ i^c^i- e^' 



"T 



"THE COMPROMISES" 99 

still more plainly. "If negroes," he said, "were 
to be viewed as inhabitants, . . . they ought to be 
added in their entire number, and not in the pro- 
portion of three fifths. If as property, the word 
' wealth ' was right," — as the basis, that is, of 
representation. The distinction that had been set 
up by Madison and others between the Northern 
and Southern States he considered as heretical and 
groundless. But it was persisted in, and " he saw 
that the Southern gentlemen will not be satisfied 
unless they see the way open to their gaining a 
majority in the public councils. . . . Either this 
distinction [between the North and the South] is 
fictitious or real ; if fictitious, let it be dismissed, 
and let us proceed with due confidence. If it be 
real, instead of attempting to blend incompatible 
things, let us at once take a friendly leave of each 
other." 

But could they take " a friendly leave of each 
other " ? Should a union be secured on the terms 
the South offered? or should it be declined, as 
Morris proposed, if it could not be a union of 
equality? The next day Madison again set forth 
the real issue, quietly but unmistakably. " It 
seemed now," he said, "to be pretty well under- 
stood that the real difference of interests lay, not 
between the large and small, but between the 
Northern and Southern States. The institution 
of slavery and its consequences formed the line of 
discrimination," There is sometimes great jmwer, 
as he well knew, in firm reiteration. So long as 



100 JAMES MADISON 

slavery lasted, the lesson he then inculcated was 
never forgotten. Thenceforward, as then, "the 
line of discrimination," in Southern politics, lay 
with " slavery and its consequences." One side 
would abate nothing of its demands ; there could 
be no " friendly leave " unless the determination, 
on the other side, to overcome the desire for union 
and take the consequences was equally firm. 

When the question again came up, however, 
Morris had not lost heart. His talk was the talk 
of a modern abolitionist : — 

" He never would concur in upholding domestic 
slavery. It was a nefarious institution. It was the curse 
of Heaven on the States where it prevailed. Compare 
the free regions of the Middle States, where a rich and 
noble cultivation marks the prosperity and happiness of 
the people, with the misery and poverty which over- 
spread the barren wastes of Virginia, Maryland, and 
the other States having slaves. Travel through the 
whole continent, and you behold the prospect continu- 
ally varying with the appearance and disappearance of 
slavery. . . . Proceed southwardly, and every step you 
take through the great regions of slavery presents a 
desert increasing with the increasing proportion of these 
wretched beings. Upon what principle is it that the 
slaves shall be computed in the representation? Are 
they men ? Then make them citizens, and let them vote. 
Are they property ? Why then is no other property 
included ? The houses m this city [Philadelphia] are 
worth more than all the wretched slaves who cover the 
rice swamps of South Carolina. . . . And what is the 
proposed compensation to the Northern States for a 



"THE COMPROMISES" 101 

sacrifice of every principle of right, of every impulse 
of humanity ? They are to bind themselves to march 
their militia for the defense of the Southern States, for 
their defense against those very slaves of whom they 
complain. They must supply vessels and seamen in 
case of foreign attack. The legislature will have indefi- 
nite power to tax them by excises and duties on imports, 
both of which will fall heavier on them than on the 
Southern inhabitants ; for the Bohea tea used by a 
Northern freeman will pay more tax than the whole 
consumption of the miserable slave, which consists of 
nothing more than his physical subsistence and the rags 
that cover his nakedness. . . . Let it not be said that 
direct taxation is to be proportioned to representation. 
It is idle to suppose that the general government can 
stretch its hand directly into the pockets of the people 
scattered over so vast a country. . . . He would sooner 
submit himself to a tax for paying for all the negroes 
in the United States than saddle posterity with such a 
Constitution." 

So mucli of this as was not already fact was 
prophecy. Yet not many weeks later this impas- 
sioned orator put his name to the Constitution, 
though it had grown meanwhile into larger pro- 
slavery proportions. There was imdoubtedly some 
sympathy with him among a few of the members ; 
but the general feeling was more truly expressed a 
few days later by Rutledge of South Carolina, in 
the debate on the continuance of the African slave 
trade. " Religion and humanity," he said, " had 
nothing to do with this question. Interest alone is 
the governing principle with nations. The true 



102 JAMES MADISON 

question at present is, whether the Southern States 
shall or shall not be parties to the Union. If the 
Northern States consult their interest, they will 
not oppose the increase of slaves, which will in- 
crease the commodities of which they will become 
the carriers." The response came from Connecti- 
cut, Oliver Ellsworth saying: "Let every State 
import what it pleases. The morality or wisdom 
of slavery are considerations belonging to the 
States themselves. What enriches a part enriches 
the whole," — especially Newport and its adjacent 
coasts, he might have added, with its trade to the 
African coast. 

But a Virginian, George Mason, had another 
tone. He called the traffic " infernal." " Slavery," 
he went on, " discourages arts and manufactures. 
The poor despise labor when performed by slaves. 
They prevent the emigration of whites, who really 
enrich and strengthen a country. They produce 
the ' most pernicious effect on manners. Every 
master of slaves is born a petty tyrant. They 
bring the judgment of Heaven on a country. As 
nations cannot be rewarded or punished in the 
next world, they must be in this. By an inevitable 
chain of causes and effects. Providence punishes 
national sins by national calamities." 

These were warnings worth heeding. But Ells- 
worth retorted with a sneer : " As he had never 
owned a slave, he could not judge of the effect of 
slavery on character." He said, however, that, 
"if it was to be considered in a moral light, we 



"THE COMPROmSES" 103 

ought to go farther, and free those already in the 
country." But, so far from that, he thought it 
would be " unjust toward South Carolina and 
Georgia," in whose "sickly rice swamps" negroes 
died so fast, should there be any intermeddling to 
prevent the importation of fresh Africans to labor, 
and, of course, to perish there. Perhaps it was 
this shrewd argument of the Connecticut delegate 
that suggested, half a century afterward, to a Mis- 
sissippi agricultural society, the economical calcu- 
lation that it was cheaper to use up a gang of 
negi'oes every few years, and supply its place by 
a fresh gang from Virginia, than rely upon the nat- 
ural increase that would follow their humane treat- 
ment as men and women. His colleague, Roger 
Sherman, came to Ellsworth's aid. It would be, 
he thought, the duty of the general government 
to prohibit the foreign trade in slaves, and, should 
this be left in its power, it would probably be 
done. But he would not, if the Southern States 
made it the condition of consenting to the Con- 
stitution that the trade should be protected, leave 
it in the power of the general government to do 
that which he acknowledged that it should and 
probably would do. 

Delegates from Georgia and the Carolinas de- 
clared that to be the condition, — among them 
C. C. Piuckney of South Carolina. " He should 
consider," he said, "a rejection of the clause as 
an exclusion of South Carolina from the Union." 
Nevertheless he said to the people at home, when 



104 JAMES MADISON 

they came together to consider the Constitution : 
" We are so weak that by ourselves we could not 
form a union strong enough for the purpose of 
effectually protecting each other. Without union 
with the other States, South Carolina must soon 
fall." On the part of that State it had been a 
game of brag all along. The first lesson in the 
South Carolinian policy was given in the Consti- 
tutional Convention. Of the result, this was 
Pinckney's summing up to his constituents : — 

" By this settlement we have secured an unlimited im- 
portation of negroes for twenty years ; nor is it declared 
that the importation shall be then stopped ; it may be 
continued. "We have a security that the general govern- 
ment can never emancipate them, for no such authority 
is granted. . . . We have obtained a right to recover 
our slaves, in whatever part of America they may take 
refuge, which is a right we had not before. In short, 
considering all circumstances, we have made the best 
terms, for the security of this species of property, it was 
in our power to make. "We would have made better if 
we could, but on the whole I do not think them bad." 

A more moderate and a more significant state- 
ment could hardly have been made. 

On the foreign slave trade Madison had little 
to say, but, like most of the Southern delegates 
north of the Carolinas, he was opposed to it. 
"Twenty years," he said, "will produce all the 
mischief that can be apprehended from the liberty 
to import slaves. So long a term will be more 
dishonorable to the American character than to 



"THE COMPROMISES" 105 

say nothing about it in the Constitution." The 
words are a little ambiguous, though he is his own 
reporter. But what he meant evidently was, that 
any protection of the trade would dishonor the 
nation ; for at another point of the debate, on the 
same day, he said that "he thought it wrong 
to admit in the Constitution the idea that there 
could be property in men." Such property he 
was anxious to protect as the great Southern inter- 
est, so long as it lasted ; but he was not willing to 
strengthen it by permitting the continuance of the 
African slave trade for twenty years longer under 
the sanction of the Constitution. But he held it 
to be, as he wrote in " The Federalist," " a great 
point gained in favor of humanity that a period of 
twenty years may terminate forever within these 
States a traffic which has so long and so loudly 
upbraided the barbarism of modern policy." He 
added, " The attempt that had been made to pervert 
this clause into an objection against the Constitu- 
tion, by representing it as a criminal toleration of 
an illicit practice," was a misconstruction which he 
did not think deserving of an answer. 

It was, in fact, a bargain which he had not ap- 
proved of, and did not now probably care to talk 
about. It was made at the suggestion of Gouver- 
neur Morris, who moved that the foreign slave 
trade, a navigation act, and a duty on exports be 
referred for consideration to a committee. " These 
things," he said, " may form a bargain among the 
Northern and Southern States." When the com- 



106 JAMES MADISON 

mittee reported in favor of the slave trade, C. C. 
Pinckney proposed that its limitation should be 
extended from 1800 to 1808. Gorham of Massar 
chusetts seconded the motion, and it was carried 
by the addition of the votes of New Hampshire, 
Massachusetts, and Connecticut to those of Mary- 
land, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. 

The committee also reported the substitution of 
a majority vote for that of two thirds in legislation 
relating to commerce. The concession was made 
without much difficulty, a Georgia delegate and 
three of the four South Carolina delegates favoring 
it, two of the latter frankly saying they did so to 
gratify New England. It was, C. C. Pinckney 
said, " the true interest of the Southern States to 
have no regulation of commerce ; " but he assented 
to this proposition, and his constituents " would be 
reconciled to this liberality," because, among other 
considerations, of " the liberal conduct [of the New 
England States] towards the views of South Caro- 
lina." There was no question of the meaning of 
this sudden avowal of friendly feeling. Jefferson 
relates in his " Ana," on the authority of George 
Mason, a member of the convention, that Georgia 
and South Carolina had " struck up a bargain with 
the three New England States, that if they would 
admit slaves for twenty years, the two southernmost 
States woidd join in changing the clause which 
required two thii'ds of the legislature in any vote." 

The settlement of these questions was an oppor- 
tune moment for the introduction of that relating 



"THE COMPROMISES" 107 

to fugitive slaves. Butler of South Carolina im- 
mediately proposed a section which should secure 
their return to their masters, and it was passed 
without a word. As Pinckney said in the passage 
already quoted, when he went back to report to 
his constituents, " it is a right to recover our slaves, 
in whatever part of America they may take refuge, 
which is a right we had not before." 

It is notable how complete and final a settle- 
ment of the slavery question " these compromises," 
as they were called, seemed to be to those who 
made them. They were meant to be, as Mr. Mad- 
ison called them, " adjustments of the different 
interests of different parts of the country," and 
being once agreed upon they were considered as 
having the binding force and stability of a con- 
tract. The evils of slavery were set forth as an 
element in the negotiation, but no question of es- 
sential morality was raised that brought the system 
within the category of forbidden wTong. What- 
ever results might follow would be limited, it was 
thought, by the terms of the contract ; whereas, in 
fact, the actual results were not foreseen, and could 
not be guarded against, except by the refusal to 
enter into any contract whatever. 

On all other questions involving political prin- 
ciples, — the just relations of the federal govern- 
ment and the governments of the States ; the re- 
lations between the larger and the smaller States ; 
the regulation of the fimctions of the executive, 
the legislative, and the judicial departments of 



108 JAMES MADISON 

government, — on all these the framers of the 
Constitution brought to bear the prof oundest wis- 
dom. When one reflects upon the magnitude and 
character of the work, Madison's conclusion seems 
hardly extravagant, that " adding to these consider- 
ations the natural diversity of human opinions on 
all new and complicated subjects, it is impossible 
to consider the degree of concord which ultimately 
prevailed as less than a miracle." There were, 
nevertheless, the gravest and most anxious doubts 
how far the Constitution would stand the test of 
time ; yet as a system of government for a nation 
of freemen it remains to this day practically un- 
changed. But where its architects thought them- 
selves wisest they were weakest. That which they 
thought they had settled forever was the one thing 
which they did not settle. Of all the "adjust- 
ments " of the Constitution, slavery was precisely 
that one which was not adjusted. 

Madison's responsibility for this result was that 
of every other delegate, — no more and no less. 
Neither he nor they, whether more or less opposed 
to slavery, saw in it a system so subversive of the 
rights of man that no just government should tol- 
erate it. That was reserved for a later generation, 
and even that was slow to learn. To the fathers 
it was, at worst, only an unfortunate and unhappy 
social condition, which it would be well to be rid 
of if this could be done without too much sacrifice ; 
but otherwise, to be submitted to, like any other 
misfortune. 



"THE COMPROMISES" 109 

While it did exist, however, Madison believed 
it should be protected, though not encouraged, as 
a Southern interest. The question resolved itself 
into one of expediency, — of union or disunion. 
What disunion would be, he knew, or thought he 
knew. Perhaps he was mistaken. Disunion, had 
it come then, might have been the way to a true 
union. " We are so weak," said C. C. Pinckney, 
" that by ourselves we could not form a union 
strong enough for the purpose of eifectually pro- 
tecting each other. Without imion with the other 
States, South Carolina must soon fall." But he 
was careful to say this at home, not in Philadel- 
phia. In the convention, Madison wrote a month 
after it adjourned, " South Carolina and Georgia 
were inflexible on the point of the slaves." What 
was to be the union which that inflexibility carried 
was not foreseen. It was the children's teetli that 
were to be set on edge. 



CHAPTER IX 

ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION 

Madison's labors for the Constitution did not 
cease when the convention adjourned, although he 
was not at that moment in a hopeful frame of 
mind in regard to it. Within a week of the ad- 
journment he wrote to Jefferson: "I hazard an 
opinion that the plan, should it be adopted, will 
neither effectually answer its national object, nor 
prevent the local mischiefs which excite disgusts 
against the state governments." 

But this feeling seems to have soon passed away. 
Perhaps, when he devoted himself to a careful 
study of what had been done, he saw, in looking at 
it as a whole, how just and true it was in its fair 
proportions. He now diligently sought to prove 
how certainly the Constitution would answer its 
purpose; how wisely all its parts were adjusted; 
how successfully the obstacles to a perfect union 
of the States had been, as he thought, overcome ; 
how carefully the rights of the separate States had 
been guarded, while the needed general govern- 
ment would be secured. Whether there should be 
an American nation or not depended, as he had 
believed for years, upon whether a national Con- 



ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION 111 

stitutlon could be agreed upon. Now that it was 
framed he believed that upon its adoption depended 
whether there should be, or should not be, a nation. 
In September, as he wrote to Jefferson, he was in 
doubt ; in February he wrote to Pendleton : " I 
have for some time been persuaded that the ques- 
tion on which the proposed Constitution must turn 
is the simple one, whether the Union shall or shall 
not be continued. There is, in my opinion, no 
middle ground to be taken." 

Those who would have called a second conven- 
tion to revise the labors of the first had no sym- 
pathy from him. He not only doubted if the 
work could be done so well again ; he doubted if 
it could be done at all. With him, it was this 
Constitution or none. " Every man," he said in 
" The Federalist," referring to a picture he had 
just drawn of the perils of disunion, — " every man 
who loves peace, every man who loves his country, 
every man who loves liberty, ought to have it ever 
before his eyes, that he may cherish in his heart 
a due attachment to the Union of America, and be 
able to set a due value on the means of preserving 
it." This " means " was the Constitution. 

Of the eighty papers of " The Federalist " he 
wrote twenty-nine ; Hamilton writing forty-six, 
and Jay only five. These famous essays, of wider 
repute than any other American book, are yet 
more generally accepted upon faith than upon 
knowledge. But at that time, when the new Con- 
stitution was in the mind and on the tongue of 



112 JAMES MADISON 

every thoughtful man, they were eagerly read as 
they followed each other rapidly in the columns of 
a New York newspaper. They were an armory, 
wherein aU who entered into the controversy could 
find such weapons as they could best handle. What 
governments had been, what governments ought to 
be, and what the political union of these American 
States would be under their new Constitution, 
were questions on which the writers of these papers 
undertook to answer all reasonable inquiries, and 
to silence all cavils. Madison would undoubtedly 
have written more than his two fifths of them, had 
he not been called upon early in March to return 
to Virginia ; for the work was of the deepest inter- 
est to him, and the popularity of the papers would 
have stimulated to exertion one as indolent as he 
was industrious. 

But the canvass for the election of delegates to 
the Constitutional Convention of Virginia called 
him home. He had been nominated as the repre- 
sentative of his county, and his friends had urged 
him to return before the election, for there was 
reason to fear that the majority was on the wrong 
side. Henry, Mason, Randolph, Lee, and others 
among the most influential men of Virginia, were 
opposed to the Constitution. There must be some- 
body in the convention to meet strong men like ^ 
these, and Madison was urged to take the stump 
and canvass for his own election. Even this he 
was willing to do at this crisis, if need be, though 
he said it would be at the sacrifice of every private 



ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION 113 

inclination, and of the rule which hitherto from 
the beginning of his public career he had strictly 
adhered to, — never to ask, directly or indirectly, 
for votes for himself. 

It is quite possible, even quite probable, that 
Mr. ISIadison had little of that gift which has 
always passed for eloquence, and is, indeed, elo- 
quence of a certain kind. If we may trust the 
reports of his contemporaries, though he wanted 
some of the graces of oratory, he was not wanting 
in the power of winning and convincing. His 
arguments were often, if not always, prepared 
with care. K there was no play of fancy, there 
was no forgetf ulness of facts. If there was lack of 
imagination, there was none of historical illustra- 
tion, when the subject admitted it. If manner was 
forgotten, method was not. His aim was to prove 
and to hold fast ; to make the wrong clear, and to 
put the right in its place ; to appeal to reason, not 
to passion, nor to prejudice ; to try his cause by 
the light of clear logic, hard facts, and sound learn- 
ing ; to convince his hearers of the truth, as he 
believed in it, not to take their judgment captive 
by surprise with harmonious modulation and grace 
of movement. Not his neighbors only, but the 
most zealous of the Federalists of the State, sent 
him to the convention. It was there that such elo- 
quence as he possessed was peculiarly needed. The 
ground was to be fought over inch by inch, and 
with antagonists whom it would be difficult, if not 
impossible, to beat. There was to be contest over 



114 JAMES MADISON 

every word of tlie Constitution from its first to its 
last. " Give me leave," cried Patrick Henry in 
his opening speech, " to demand what right had 
they to say ' We the people ' instead of ' We the 
States ' ? " He began at the beginning. It was 
the gage of the coming battle ; the defenders were 
challenged to show that any better union than that 
already in existence was needed, and that in this 
new Constitution a better union was furnished. 

As month after month passed away while the 
Constitution was before the people for adoption, 
the anxiety of the Federalists grew, lest the requi- 
site nine States should not give their assent. But 
when eight were secured there was room to hope 
even for unanimity, if Virginia should come in as 
the ninth. Should she say Yes, the Union might 
be perfect ; for the remaining States would be 
almost sure to follow her lead. But should she 
say No, the final result would be doubtful, even if 
the requisite nine should be secured by the acquies- 
cence of one of the smaller States. This answer 
could not, of course, depend altogether upon one 
man, but it did depend more upon Madison than 
upon anybody else. 

The convention was in session nearly a month. 
At the end of a fortnight he was not hopeful. 
" The business," he wrote to Washington, " is in 
the most ticklish state that can be imagined. The 
majority will certainly be very small, on whatever 
side it may finally lie ; and I dare not encourage 
much expectation that it will be on the favorable 



ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION 115 

side." But his fears stimulated rather than dis- 
couraged him. He was always on his feet ; always 
ready to meet argument with argument ; always 
prompt to appeal from passion to reason ; quick 
to brush aside mere declamation, and to bring the 
minds of his hearers back to a calm consideration 
of how much was at stake, and of the weight of the 
responsibility resting on that convention. Others 
were no less earnest and diligent than he ; but he 
was easily chief, and the biu-den and heat of the 
day fell mainly upon him. Probably when the 
convention assembled the majority were opposed 
to the Constitution ; but its adoption was carried 
at last by a vote of eighty-nine to seventy-nine. 
Thenceforth opposition in the remaining States was 
hopeless. 

New Hampshire — though the fact was not 
known in Virginia — preceded that State by a 
few days in accepting the Constitution, so that the 
requisite nine were secured before the convention 
at Richmond came to a decision. But it was her 
decision, nevertheless, that really settled, so far as 
can be seen now, the question of a permanent 
Union. Had the vote of Virginia been the other 
way it is not likely that Hamilton would have 
carried New York, or that North Carolina and 
Rhode Island would have finally decided not to 
be left in solitude outside. What the history of 
the nine united States only, with four disunited 
States among them, might have been, it is impossi- 
ble to know, and quite useless to conjecture. The 



116 JAMES MADISON 

conditions which some of the States attached to the 
act of adoption, the addition of a Bill of Rights, 
proposed amendments to the Constitution, and the 
suggestion of submitting it to a second conven- 
tion, were matters of comparatively little moment, 
when the majority of ten delegates was secured at 
Richmond. These were questions that could be 
postponed. " The delay of a few years," Madison 
wrote to Jefferson, " wiU assuage the jealousies 
which have been artificially created by designing 
men, and will at the same time point out the faults 
which call for amendment." 

Immediately after the adjournment of the Rich- 
mond Convention he returned to New York, where 
the confederate Congress was still in session. 
That body had little to do now but decide upon 
the time and place of the inauguration of the new 
government. Madison had entered upon his thirty- 
eighth year, and we get an interesting glimpse of 
him as he appeared at this time of his life to an 
intelligent foreigner. " Mr. Warville Brissot has 
just arrived here," he wrote to Jefferson in August, 
1788. This was Brissot de Warville, a Frenchman 
of the new philosophy, — whose head, nevertheless, 
his compatriots cut off a few years later, — then 
traveling in America to observe the condition and 
progress of the new republic. His tour extended 
to nearly all the States ; he met with most of the 
distinguished men of the country ; and he made a 
careful and intelligent use of his many opportuni- 
ties for observation. On his return to France he 



ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION 117 

wrote an entertaining volume, — " New Travels in 
the United States of America," — still to be found 
in some old libraries. What he says of Madison 
is worth repeating, not only for the impression he 
made upon an observant stranger, but as the evi- 
dence of the contemporary estimate of his charac- 
ter and reputation, which De Warville must have 
gathered from others. 

" The name of Madison," he writes, " celebrated in 
America, is well known in Europe by the merited eulo- 
gimn made of him by his countryman and friend, Mr. 
Jefferson. 

" Though still young, he has rendered the greatest 
services to Virginia, to the American Confederation, and 
to liberty and humanity in general. He contributed 
much, vriih. Mr. "White, in reforming the civil and crim- 
inal codes of his country. He distinguished himself 
particularly in the convention for the acceptation of the 
new federal system. Virginia balanced a long time in 
adhering to it. Mr. Madison determined to it the mem- 
bers of the convention by his eloquence and logic. This 
republican appears to be about thirty-eight years of age. 
He had, when I saw him, an air of fatigue ; perhaps it 
was the effect of the immense labors to which he has 
devoted himself for some time past. His look announces 
a censor, his conversation discovers the man of learning, 
and his reserve was that of a man conscious of his talents 
and of his duties. 

" During the dinner, to which he invited me, they 
spoke of the refusal of North Carolina to accede to the 
new Constitution. The majority against it was one 
hundred. Mr. Madison believed that this refusal would 



^*' 



118 JAMES MADISON 

have no weight on the minds of the Americans, and that 
it would not impede the operations of Congress. I told 
him that though this refusal might be regarded as a trifle 
in America, it would have great weight in Europe ; that 
they would never inquire there into the motives which 
dictated it, nor consider the small consequence of this 
State in the confederation ; that it would be regarded as 
a germ of division, calculated to retard the operations of 
Congress ; and that certainly this idea would prevent the 
resurrection of American credit. 

" Mr. Madison attributed this refusal to the attach- 
ment of a great part of the inhabitants of that State to 
their paper money and their tender act. He was much 
inclined to believe that this disposition would not remain 
a long time." 

In October the Virginia Assembly met. Two 
thirds of its members were opposed to the new 
Constitution, and at their head was Patrick Henry, 
his zeal against it not in the least abated because 
he had been defeated in the late convention. The 
acceptance of the Constitution by that representa- 
tive body could not be recalled. But the Assembly 
could, at least, protest against it, and was led by 
Henry to call upon Congress to convene a second 
national convention to do over again the work of 
the first. The legislature was to elect senators for 
the first Senate under the new government; and 
it was also to divide the State into districts for 
its representation in the lower house of Congress. 
In ordinary fairness, as the State had, in a popular 
convention, so recently accepted the Constitution, 
the party then in the majority was entitled to at 



ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION 119 

least one of the representatives in the Senate. 
But Henry nominated both, and could command 
votes enough to elect them. In modern party 
usage this would seem quite unobjectionable ; in- 
deed, a modern politician who should not use such 
an advantage for his party would be considered as 
unfit for practical politics. But a hundred years 
ago it was thought sharp practice, and a fair pro- 
portion of Henry's partisans refused to be bound 
by it. One of Henry's nominees was elected by a 
majority of twenty over Madison ; but in the case 
of the other that majority was reduced more than 
half, and a change of five more votes would have 
elected Madison. 

He had, however, neither expected nor wished 
to be sent to the Senate, while he did hope to be 
elected to the House of Representatives. The 
Senate was intended to be the more dignified body, 
requiring in its members a certain style of living 
for which wealth was indispensable. Madison had 
not the means to give that kind of social support 
to official position ; but he could afford to belong 
to that body where a member was not the less 
respectable because his whole domestic establish- 
ment might be a bachelor's room in a boarding- 
house. 

Virginia was, as he wrote to Washington, " the 
only instance among the ratifying States in which 
the politics of the legislature are at variance with 
the sense of the people, expressed by their repre- 
sentatives in convention." This had enabled Henry 



120 JAMES MADISON 

and a majority of his friends to elect senators who, 
representing " the politics of the legislature," did 
not represent " the sense of the people " in regard 
to the national Constitution. But in the election 
of members of the House of Representatives, the 
sense of the people was to be again appealed to, 
and a new way must be devised for asserting the 
supremacy of legislative power. The cleverness 
of Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, many years 
later, under similar circumstances, introduced a 
new word into the language of the country, and, it 
was supposed at the time, a new device in Amer- 
ican politics. But what has since been known as 
"Gerrymandering" was really the invention of 
Patrick Henry. This method of arranging coun- 
ties into congressional districts in accordance with 
their political affinities, without regard to their 
geographical lines, Henry attempted to do with 
Mr. Madison's own county. By joining it to dis- 
tant counties it was expected that an anti-Federal 
majority would be secured large enough to insure 
his defeat. The attempt to elect him to the Senate 
was, Madison wrote to Jefferson, "defeated by 
Mr. Henry, who is omnipotent in the present 
legislature." He adds that Henry " has taken 
equal pains, in forming the counties into districts 
for the election of representatives, to associate with 
Orange such as are most devoted to his politics, 
and most likely to be swayed by the prejudices 
excited against me." The scheme, however, was 
unsuccessful, perhaps partly because of the indig- 



ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION 121 

nation which so dishonorable a measure to defeat 
a political opponent excited throughout the State. 
Madison entered upon an active canvass of his 
district against James Monroe, who had been 
nominated as a moderate anti-Federalist, and de- 
feated him. It was winter time, and in the ex- 
posure of some of his long rides his ears were 
frozen. In later life he sometimes laughingly- 
pointed to the scars of these wounds received, he 
said, in the service of his country. 

Thus Henry's " Gerrymander," like many an- 
other useful and curious device, brought neither 
profit nor credit to the original inventor. Had 
Henry acted in the broader spirit of the modern 
politician, who sees that he serves himself best 
who serves his party best, he would have disposed 
of every Federal county in the State as he dis- 
posed of Orange. As it was, he only aroused a 
good deal of indignation and defeated himself by 
openly aiming to gratify his personal resentments. 
Had he scattered his shot for the general good of 
the party, he would, perhaps, have brought down 
his particular bird. 



CHAPTER X 

THE FIRST CONGRESS 

The confederate Congress, at its final session 
in 1788, had fixed the time for the election of 
President and Vice-President under the Constitu- 
tion, and the time and place for the meeting of 
the first Congress of the new government. The 
day appointed was the first Wednesday of the fol- 
lowing March, and, as that date fell on the fourth 
of the month, a precedent was established which 
has ever since been observed in the installation of 
a new President. The place was not so easily 
determined. The choice lay between New York 
and Philadelphia, and the struggle was prolonged, 
not because the question of the temporary seat 
of government was of much moment, but because 
of the influence the decision might have upon the 
future settlement of the permanent place for the 
capital. 

No quorum of the new Congress was present at 
New York on March 4, 1789, and neither house 
was organized until early in April. On the 23d 
Washington arrived; and on the 30th he took 
the oath of office as first President of the United 
States, standing on the balcony of Federal Hall, 



THE FIRST CONGRESS 123 

at the corner of Wall and Broad streets, a site 
now occupied by another building used as the sub- 
treasury. A week before, when the ceremonies 
proper for such an occasion were a subject of 
discussion in Congress, the question of fitting titles 
for the President and Vice-President came up for 
consideration. It was decided that when the Pre- 
sident arrived the Vice-President should meet himi 
at the door of the senate chamber, lead him to 
the chair, and then, in a formal addi-ess, inform 
him that the two houses were ready to witness 
the administration of the oath of office. "Upon 
tliis," says John Adams in a letter written three 
years afterward, " I arose in my place and asked 
the advice of the Senate, in what form I should 
address him, whether I should say 'Mr. Wash- 
ington,' ' Mr. President,' ' Sir,' ' May it please 
your Excellency,' or what else? I observed that 
it had been common while he commanded the 
army to call him ' His Excellency,' but I was free 
to own it would appear to me better to give him 
no title but ' Sir,' or ' Mr. President,' than to put 
him on a level with a governor of Bermuda, or one 
of his own ambassadors, or a governor of any one 
of our States." 

Thereupon the question went to a conference 
committee of both houses, who reported that no 
other title would be proper for either Pi'esident or 
Vice-President, at any time, than those which were 
given by the Constitution. To this report the 
Senate disagreed and appointed a new committee. 



124 JAMES MADISON 

This proposed that the President should be called 
" His Highness the President of the United States 
and Protector of their Liberties." When wise men 
are absurd they presume on their prerogative. The 
Senate accepted the report, but the House had the 
good sense to reject it, consenting, however, to 
leave the question in abeyance. On these pro- 
ceedings Mr. Madison thus commented in a letter 
to Jefferson : — 

" My last inclosed copies of the President's inaugural 
speech, and the answer of the House of Representatives. 
I now add the answer of the Senate. It will not have 
escaped you that the former was addressed with a truly 
republican simpUcity to George Washington, President 
of the United States. The latter follows the example, 
with the omission of the personal name, but without any 
other than the constitutional title. The proceeding on 
this point was, in the House of Representatives, spon- 
taneous. The imitation by the Senate was extorted. 
The question became a serious one between the two 
houses. J. Adams espoused the cause of titles with 
great earnestness. His friend, R. H. Lee, although 
elected as a republican enemy to an aristocratic Con- 
stitution, was a most zealous second. The projected 
title was, His Highness the President of the United 
States and the Protector of their Liberties. Had the 
project succeeded, it would have subjected the Presi- 
dent to a severe dilemma, and given a deep wound to 
our infant government." 

Washington has sometimes been accused of wish- 
ing for the title of " His Highness," and of having 



THE FIRST CONGRESS 125 

suggested it. Had this been true, Madison would 
have been certain to know it, and he was quite 
incapable of asserting in that case that such a 
title would have been to the President " a severe 
dilemma." About Mr. Adams he was perhaps 
mistaken, as he might easily have been, since he 
was not a member of the Senate, and probably 
heard only a confused report of how the question 
was brought before that body. As Mr. Adams's 
letter, quoted just now, shows, he regarded the 
charge as a calumny and resented it. He gave 
them, according to his own statement, no other 
opinion than that he preferred " Sir," or " Mr. 
President," as a more proper address than " Excel- 
lency," a title then, as now, pertaining to governors 
of States. He probably took no further part in 
the debate, but it is not impossible that he may in 
private have avowed a preference for some other 
and higher title than either " Mr. President " or 
" Your Excellency." " For," he said in the explan- 
atory letter to his friend, " I freely own that I 
think decent and moderate titles, as distinctions 
of offices, are not only harmless, but useful in 
society ; and that in this country, where I know 
them to be prized by the people as well as their 
magistrates as highly as by any people or any 
magistrates in the world, I should think some dis- 
tinction between the magistrates of the national 
government and those of the state governments 
proper." A distinction might be proper enough if 
there were to be any titles whatever ; but certainly 



126 JAMES MADISON 

they were the wiser who preferred good homespun 
to threadbare old clothes. Had rags of that sort 
been made a legal uniform, it is almost appalling to 
reflect upon the absurdities to which the national 
fondness for titles would have carried us. 

From March 4 to April 1, though the House of 
Eepresentatives met daily, there were not members 
enough present to make a quorum. The first real 
business brought before the House, except that 
relating to its organization, was introduced by 
Madison, two days after the inauguration. It 
was a proposition to raise a revenue by duties on 
imports, and by a tonnage duty on all vessels, 
American and foreign, bringing goods, wares, or 
merchandise into the United States. The essential 
weakness of the late Confederacy was, first of all, 
to be remedied by uniform rules for the regulation 
of trade. Kevenue must be provided for the sup- 
port of government, and that in a way which should 
not be oppressive to the people. Commerce, Mr. 
Madison said, " ought to be as free as the policy 
of nations will admit," but government must be 
supported, and taxes the least burdensome and 
most easily collected are those derived from duties 
on imports. He agreed, however, as he said on the 
second day of the debate, with those who would so 
adjust the duties on foreign goods as to protect 
the " infant manufactories " of the country. With 
little interruption this subject was debated for the 
first six weeks of the opening session of the First 
Congress. No other could have been hit upon to 



THE FIRST CONGRESS 127 

test so tlioroughly the strength of the new bond 
of union. It was to brush aside all those trade 
resfulations in the several States which each had 
hitherto thought essential to its prosperity. Every 
interest in the country was to be considered, and 
their different, sometimes opposing, claims to be 
reconciled. 

New England was sure that, should the tax on 
molasses be too high, the distilleries would be shut 
up, and a great New England industry destroyed. 
Nor would the injury stop there. The fisheries, 
as well as the distilleries, would be ruined. For 
three fifths of the fish put up for the West Indies 
could find no market anywhere else ; and a market 
existed there only because molasses was taken in 
exchange. A prohibitory duty on that article, 
or a duty that should seriously interfere with its 
importation, would wellnigh destroy the fisheries. 
What then would become of the nursery of Ameri- 
can seamen ? With no seamen there would be no 
shipbuilding. What sadder picture than this of a 
New England without rum, without codfish, with- 
out seamen, and without ships ! One can easily 
conceive that even in that restrained and dignified 
First Confess there was no want of serious and 
alarmed expostulation, and even some threatening 
talk from such men as the tranquil Goodhue, the 
thoughtful and scholarly Ames, and the impulsive 
Gerry. 

Then the South, for her part, was alarmed lest, 
among other things, too high a tonnage duty should 



128 JAMES MADISON 

leave her tobacco, her rice and indigo, rotting in 
the fields and warehouses for want of ships to take 
them to market. She had no ships of her own and 
could have none, and she invited the ships of the 
rest of the world to come for her products and 
bring in return all she needed for her own con- 
sumption. The picture of the possible ruin of New 
England was as nothing to that of the Southern 
planter scanning the horizon with weary eyes in 
vain for the sight of a sail, while behind him 
was a dangerous crowd of hungry blacks with 
nothing to do. That desolation seemed complete 
to the southernmost States when it was also pro- 
posed to levy a tax of ten dollars upon every slave 
imported. In short, the whole subject bristled 
with difficulties. The problem was nothing more 
nor less than how to tax everything, and at the 
same time convince everybody that the scheme 
was for the general good, while nobody's special 
interests were sacrificed. The " infant indus- 
tries," to which Mr. Madison alluded, really re- 
ceived no special consideration in the final adjust- 
ment, and they were too feeble then even to Cry for 
nursing. They have grown stronger since, though 
they are "infants" still; and they should never 
cease to be grateful to him who, however unwit- 
tingly, gave them a name to live by for a hundred 
years. 

But the most remarkable part of the debate was 
that upon the proposition of Mr. Parker of Vir- 
ginia to impose a duty upon the importation of 



THE FIRST CONGRESS 129 

slaves. Could the progress of events have been 
foreseen, that proposal might have been regarded 
as meant to protect an " infant industry " of the 
northernmost slave States. But the wildest imagi- 
nation then could not conceive of the domestic 
slave trade of a few years later, when a chief 
source of the prosperity of Virginia would be her 
perennial crop of young men and women to be 
shipped for New Orleans and a market. But Mr. 
Parker had no ulterior motive when he avowed his 
regret that the Constitution had failed to prohibit 
the importation of slaves from Africa, and hoped 
that the duty he proposed would prevent, in some 
degree, a traffic which he pronounced " irrational 
and inhuman." It would have been difficult to 
have found a Virginian of that day who would not 
have taken down his shotgun on hearing that 
there were miscreants prowling about his kitchen 
doors in the hope of buying up the strongest 
young people of his household for export to the 
Southwest. 

Judging from the imperfect report of the debate 
upon the subject, it would seem that the bargain 
relative to the slave trade, made in the Constitu- 
tional Convention of two years before between 
New England and the two southernmost States, 
might still hold good. Or there may have been a 
new bargain ; or, perhaps, both sides trusted to a 
tacit recognition of the eternal fitness of things, 
and made common cause where legislation threat- 
ened at the same time the distillery and the 



130 JAMES MADISON 

slave-ship.^ At any rate, the extreme Southerners 
expressed surprise at the audacity which would 
disturb a compromise of the Constitution ; the ex- 
treme Northerners deprecated it as quite uncalled 
for in any consideration of the subject of revenue. 
The principle of Mr. Parker's motion, Mr. Sher- 
man of Connecticut thought, was to correct a moral 
evil ; the principle of the bill before the House was 
to raise a revenue. At some other time he would 
be willing to consider the question of taxing the 
importation of negroes on the ground of humanity 
and policy; but it was a sufficient reason with 
him for not admitting it as an object of revenue 
that the burden would fall upon two States only. 
Fisher Ames of Massachusetts could only take 
counsel of his conscience. From his soul, he said, 

^ Eleven years afterward, when the question of prohibiting the 
carrying on the slave trade from American ports came up, one 
John Brown of Rhode Island said in Congress, " Our distilleries 
and manufactories were all lying idle for want of an extended 
commerce. He had been well informed that on those coasts 
[African] New England rum was much preferred to the best 
Jamaica spirits, and would fetch a better price. Why should it 
not be sent there, and a profitable return be made ? Why should 
a heavy fine and imprisonment [of slave traders] be made the 
penalty for carrying on a trade so advantageous ? " Sixty years 
later still, there was another Brown in Providence, Rhode Island, 
who was a member of the Committee of the Kansas Aid Society 
of New England. He was about to withdraw from it for want of 
time to attend to its duties, — had, indeed, actually sent in his 
resignation, — when news came of the doings of another John 
Brown at Harper's Ferry. The resignation was instantly recalled, 
with the remark that it was not a time for Browns to seem to be 
backward on the question of slavery. Such is the irony of coinci- 
dence in names. 



THE FIRST CONGRESS 131 

he detested slavery ; and — forgetting, apparently, 
that this tax was provided for by the Constitution 
— he doubted whether imposing it " would not 
have the appearance of authorizing the practice " 
of trading in slaves. This was his reason for wish- 
ing to postpone the subject. But Mr. Livermore 
of New Hampshire was more ingenious still. If 
the imported negroes were goods, wares, or mer- 
chandise, they would come within the title of the 
bill, and be taxed under the general rule of five 
per centum, which would be about the same rate 
as ten dollars a head ; but if they were not goods, 
wares, or merchandise, then such importation coiUd 
not properly be included in the consideration of 
the question of a revenue from duties on such 
articles of trade. 

Mr. Madison came to the help of his colleague, 
and brushed aside the sophistries of the New 
England allies of the slave traders. If there were 
anything wanting in the title of the bill to cover 
this particidar duty, it was easy to add it. If the 
question was not one of taxation because it was 
one of humanity, it would be quite as difficult to 
deal with it under any other bill for levying a 
duty as under this. If the tax seemed unjust be- 
cause it bore heavily upon a single class, that 
would be a good reason for remitting many taxes 
which there was no hesitation in imposing. If ten 
dollars seemed a heavy duty, a little calcidation 
would show that it was only about the proposed 
ad valorem duty of five per centum on most other 



132 JAMES MADISON 

importations. " It is to be hoped," he added, "that 
by expressing a national disapprobation of this 
trade we may destroy it, and save ourselves from 
reproaches, and our posterity the imbecility ever 
attendant on a country filled with slaves." "If 
there is any one point," he continued, " in which 
it is clearly the policy of this nation, so far as we 
constitutionally can, to vary the practice obtaining 
under some of the state governments, it is this. . . . 
It is as much the interest of Georgia and South 
Carolina as of any in the Union. Every addition 
they receive to their number of slaves tends to 
weaken and render them less capable of self- 
defense. ... It is a necessary duty of the general 
government to protect every part of the empire 
against danger, as well internal as external. 
Everything, therefore, which tends to increase 
this danger, though it may be a local affair, yet, 
if it involves national expense or safety, becomes 
of concern to every part of the Union, and is a pro- 
per subject for the consideration of those charged 
with the general administration of the govern- 
ment." No Northern man, except Elbridge Gerry 
of Massachusetts, supported this measure; and 
none from the Southern States, except three of 
the Virginia members, with Madison leading. As 
the foreign slave trade was protected in the Con- 
stitution for twenty years by a bargain between 
the two southernmost States and New England, so 
now the same influence staved off the imposition of 
the tax which was a part of the consideration to be 



THE FIRST CONGRESS 133 

given for that constitutional protection of the trade. 
It is not a creditable fact ; but it is, nevertheless, 
a fact and a representative one in the history of 
the United States. And it is to Madison's great 
honor that he had neither part nor lot in it. 

After six weeks of earnest debate, an amicable 
and satisfactory agreement was made to impose a 
moderate duty upon pretty much everything im- 
ported, except slaves from Africa. It was liter- 
ally a tariff for revenue ; but it was a settlement 
that settled nothing definitely, except that the pro- 
vision of the Constitution for a tax of ten dollars 
on imported slaves should be a dead letter. Thence- 
forth the policy of free trade was established, so 
far as African slaves were concerned, till the traffic 
was supposed to cease by constitutional limitation 
and Act of Congress in 1808.^ 

^ The subsequent legislation on this subject is a curious exem- 
plification of the ingenuity with which any law obnoxious to the 
owners of slaves was got rid of, when it was clear that it could 
not be defeated by force of numbers. In 1806 a final attempt was 
made to impose the duty of ten dollars upon slaves imported, and 
a resolution passed in favor of it. This was referred to a com- 
mittee, with instructions to bring in a bilL A bill was reported 
and pushed so far as a third reading, when it was recommitted, 
which put it off for a year. When it next appeared it was a bill 
for the prohibition of the importation of slaves, in accordance with 
the constitutional provision that the traffic should cease in 1808. 
The new question, after some debate, in which there was no allu- 
sion to the tax, was postponed for further consideration. But it 
never again came before the House. A month later, February 
13, 1807, a bill from the Senate, providing that the foreign slave 
trade should cease on the first day of the following January, was 
received and immediately concurred in, and that seems to have 



134 JAMES MADISON 

The determination to protect the commercial 
interests of the country, beyond the point of mere 
revenue, was more manifest in fixing the rate of 
duty upon tonnage than in duties upon importa- 
tions. It was generally agreed, after much debate, 
that American commerce had better be in Ameri- 
can hands, and a difference of twenty cents a ton 
was made between the tax upon domestic and that 
upon foreign ships, as a measure of protection to 
American shipping. Mr. Madison proposed to 
make it still larger, but the House would only 
agree to increase it to forty cents on ships belong- 
ing to powers with which the United States had 
no treaties. The Senate, however, refused to ad- 
mit this distinction, and insisted that all foreign 
ships should be subject to the same tonnage duty 
without regard to existing treaties. The House 
assented, lest the bill should be lost altogether. 
This proposed differential duty on foreign vessels 
was as clearly aimed at Great Britain as if that 
power had been named in the bill. Nor, indeed, 
was there any attempt at concealment ; for it was 
openly avowed that America had no formidable 
rival except the English, who already largely con- 
trolled the commerce of the United States. In the 
debates and in the final decision of the question 

been silently accepted as disposing of the whole subject. No tax 
was ever paid ; but the importation of slaves, notwithstanding 
the law to put an end to importation in 1808, continued at the 
rate, it was estimated, of about fifteen thousand a year. Prob- 
ably it never ceased altogether till the beginning of the rebellion 
of 1860. 



THE FIRST CONGRESS 135 

is shown clearly enough the difference of opinion 
and of feeling, which soon made the dividing line 
between the two great parties of the first quarter 
of a century under the Constitution. Nobody then 
foresaw how bitter that difference of party was 
to be, nor what disastrous consequences would fol- 
low it. 

Mr. Madison was among the most zealous of 
those who insisted upon a discrimination against 
Great Britain. He thought it should be made 
for the dignity no less than for the interest of the 
United States. He had no fear, he said, " of enter- 
ing into a commercial warfare with that nation." 
England, he believed, could do this country no 
harm by any peacefid reprisals she could devise. 
She supplied the United States with no article 
either of necessity or of luxury that the people of 
the United States could not manufacture for them- 
selves. He called those " Anglicists " who did not 
agree with him, and who believed that it was in 
the power of Great Britain to hinder or to help 
immensely the prosperity of the United States. It 
was not of so much moment what America bougfht 
of England as it was that England should con- 
sent to free trade with her colonies ; and on every 
account it was wiser to conciliate than to defy Great 
Britain ; wiser to induce her to enter into a friendly 
commercial alliance than to provoke her to retali- 
ate upon the feeble commerce of this country, upon 
which she had so strong a grip. Madison had 
shown himself, before this time, half credulous of 



136 JAMES MADISON 

the charges of a leaning toward England, and 
toward monarchy, made by those who wanted a 
congress of petty states against those who wanted 
a strong national government. If, however, there 
were Anglicism on one side, so there was quite as 
much Gallicism, if not a good deal more, on the 
other. In writing to Jefferson of the probability 
that the Senate would make no discrimination in 
the tonnage duties, he said that in that case " Great 
Britain will be quieted in the enjoyment of our 
trade as she may please to regulate it, and France 
discouraged from her efforts at a competition which 
it is not less our interest than hers to promote." 
Whatever may be thought of this first concession 
of the new government to England, it is quite as 
much the coming party leader as the statesman 
who speaks here. It may not be doubted that he 
sincerely thought it to be, as he said, " impolitic, 
in every view that can be taken of the subject, to 
put Great Britain at once on the footing of the 
most favored nation." But the relation of Amer- 
ican interests to English interests was evidently 
already associated in his mind with the relations 
of France and England, so soon to be the absorb- 
ing question in American politics. 

The impost act was followed by others hardly 
less important in putting the new Constitution into 
operation under its first Congress. The direction 
of business seems, by common consent, to have 
been intrusted to Mr. Madison among the many 
able men of that body ; doubtless because of his 



THE FIRST CONGRESS 137 

thorough familiarity with the Constitution, and of 
his methodical ways. He was sure to bring tilings 
forward in their due order, to provide judiciously 
for the more immediate needs. The impost bill 
secured the means to work with ; the next neces- 
sity was to organize the machinery to do the work. 
Resolutions to create the executive departments of 
Foreign Affairs, of the Treasury, and of War were 
offered by Mr. Madison. These were required in 
general terms by the Constitution, with a single 
officer at the head of each, to be appointed by the 
President " by and with the ad^ace and consent of 
the Senate." The manner of the appointment of 
subordinate officers was provided for by the Con- 
stitution, but the manner of their removal from 
office was not. Was the tenure of office to be 
good behavior ? Were the incumbents removable, 
with or without cause ? If the power of removal 
existed, did it vest in the power that appointed, 
that is, in the President and Senate conjointly, or 
in the President alone ? 

As the Constitution was silent, the question 
had to be settled on its own merits. With all 
the arguments that could be urged, either on one 
side or the other, we are familiar enough in our 
time, coming up as the question so often does in 
changes in state constitutions and mvmicipal char- 
ters, and in the discussion of the necessity for 
civil service reform. There is this essential dif- 
ference, however, between now and then : we know 
the mischiefs that come from the power of official 



138 JAMES MADISON 

removal, which were then only dimly apprehended. 
The power of removal from office belonged, Mr. 
Madison believed, rightfully to the chief magis- 
trate, and, if by some unhappy chance the wrong 
man should find his way to that position and abuse 
the power intrusted to him, " the wanton removal 
of meritorious officers would," he said, " subject 
the President to impeachment and removal from 
his own high trust." 

Lofty political principles like these may still be 
found in the platforms of modern political par- 
ties, — 

" The souls of them fumed-forth, the hearts of them tom-out." 

But Mr. Madison believed, at least, that he be- 
lieved in them. There is in politics as in religion 
an accepted doctrine of justification by faith ; and 
this, perhaps, sustained him when, twelve years 
later, as Jefferson's secretary of state, he learned 
from his chief that, as "Federalists seldom died 
and never resigned," party necessities must find a 
way of supplementing the law of nature. Jeffer- 
son was a little timid in applying the remedy, but 
Madison lived long enough to see Jackson boldly 
remove, in the course of his administration, about 
two thousand office-holders, whose places he wanted 
as rewards for his own political followers. From 
that time to this, there has not been a President 
who might not, if Madison's doctrine was sound, 
have been impeached for a " wanton " abuse of 
power. 



THE FIRST CONGRESS 139 

Though the Constitution had been adopted by 
the States, it was not without objections by some 
of them. To meet these objections Mr. Madison 
proposed twelve amendments declaratory of cer- 
tain fundamental popidar rights, which, it was 
thought by many persons, were not sufficiently 
guarded by the original articles. This, also, was 
left to him to do, no doubt because of his thor- 
ough knowledge of the Constitution and of the 
points wherein it was still imperfect, as well as 
those wherein it had better not be meddled with. 
The amendments, as finally agreed to after long 
debate, were essentially those which he proposed, 
and in due time ten of them were ratified by the 
States. The two that were not accepted referred 
only to the number of representatives in the 
House, and to the pay of members of Congress. 

It was hoped that the selection of a place for the 
permanent seat of government would be made by 
this Congress. There was much talk of the centres 
of wealth, of territory, and of population then, 
and of where such centres might be in the future. 
But the question was really a sectional one. The 
Northern members were accused of having made 
a bargain out of doors with the members of the 
Middle States. The bargain, however, was only 
this : that, inasmuch as it was hopeless that the 
actual centre should be chosen as the site for a cap- 
ital city, a place as near as possible to it should 
be insisted upon. The South, on the other hand, 
determined that the seat of government should 



140 JAMES MADISON 

be within the boundaries of the Southern Stat6s. 
That was a foregone conclusion with them, that 
needed no bargain. The nearest navigable river 
to the centre of population was the Delaware ; but 
the jealousy of New York stood in the way of any 
selection that favored Philadelphia. The Sus- 
quehanna was proposed. It empties into Chesa- 
peake Bay. North of it was, as Mr. Sherman 
showed, a population of 1,400,000 ; and south of it, 
1,200,000. The South wanted the capital on the 
Potomac, not because it was the centre of popu- 
lation then, but because it might be at some future 
time, from the growth of the West. On the other 
hand, it was insisted that the population south of 
the Potomac was then only 960,000, while north 
of it there were 1,680,000 people, and that it was 
no more accessible from the West than the Susque- 
hanna was. To many members, moreover, this talk 
of the great future of the West seemed hardly 
worthy of consideration. It was " an unmeasur- 
able wilderness," and "when it would be settled 
w^as past calculation," Fisher Ames said. " It 
was," he added, " perfectly romantic to make this 
decision depend upon that circumstance. Proba- 
bly it will be near a century before these people 
will be considerable." He was nearer right when 
he said in the same speech " that trade and manu- 
factures will accumulate people in the Eastern 
States in proportion of five to three, compared 
with the Southern. The disproportion will, doubt- 
less, continue to be much greater than I have 



THE FIRST CONGRESS 141 

calculated. It is actually greater at present, for 
the climate and negro slavery are acknowledged to 
be unfavorable to population, so that husbandry as 
well as commerce and manufactures will give more 
people in the Eastern than in the Southern States." 
It was, however, finally resolved by the House 
"that the permanent seat of the government of 
the United States ought to be at some convenient 
place on the banks of the river Susquehanna in 
the State of Pennsylvania ; " and a bill accordingly 
was sent to the Senate. 

Had the Senate agreed to this bill, there are 
some luminous pages of American history that 
woidd never have been wiitten; for the progi-ess 
of events would have taken quite another direction 
had the influences surrounding the national capital 
for the first half of this century been Northern 
instead of Southern. But the Senate did not 
agree. For " the convenient place on the banks of 
the Susquehanna " it substituted ten miles square 
on the river Delaware, beginning one mile from 
Philadelphia and including the village of German- 
town. To this amendment the House agi'eed, and 
there, but for Madison, the matter would have 
ended. He had labored earnestly for the site on 
the Potomac ; but failing in that, he hoped to post- 
pone the question till the next session of Congress, 
when the representatives from North Carolina 
would be present. He moved a proviso that the 
laws of Pennsylvania should remain in force within 
the district ceded by the State till Congress should 



142 JAMES MADISON 

otherwise provide by law. It seems to have been 
accepted without consideration, a single member 
only saying that he saw no necessity for it. At 
any rate, whether that was Mr. Madison's motive 
or not, time was gained, for it compelled the return 
of the bill to the Senate. This was on September 
28, and the next day the session was closed by 
adjournment till the following January. 

When in that next session the bill came back 
from the Senate to the House, a member from 
South Carolina said, in the course of debate, that 
*' a Quaker State was a bad neighborhood for the 
South Carolinians." The Senate had also come 
to that conclusion, for the biU now proposed that 
the capital should be at Philadelphia for ten years 
only, and should then be removed to the banks of 
the Potomac. It was done, Madison wrote to 
Monroe, by a single vote, for two Southern sen- 
ators voted against it. But the two senators from 
North Carolina were now present, and the majority 
of one was made sure of somehow. 

So much was gained by gaining time, and Mad- 
ison thought the passage of the bill through the 
House was possible, " but attended with great 
difficulties." Did he know how these difficulties 
were to be overcome? "If the Potomac succeeds," 
he adds, " it will have resulted from a fortuitous 
coincidence of circumstances which might never 
happen again." What the "fortuitous coinci- 
dence " was he does not explain ; but the term was 
a felicitous euphuism to cover up what in the 



THE FIRST CONGRESS 143 

blunter political language of our time is called 
"log-rolling." 

The reader of this series of biographies is al- 
ready familiar with Hamilton's skillful barter of 
votes for the Potomac site of the capital in ex- 
change for votes in favor of his scheme for the 
assumption of the state debts. Madison seems 
not to have been ignorant of the progress of that 
bargain, wdth which Jefferson was afterward so 
anxious to prove that he had nothing to do. Mad- 
ison earnestly opposed the assumption of the state 
debts from first to last ; but, when he saw that the 
measure was sure to pass the House, he wrote to 
Monroe : " I cannot deny that the crisis demands 
a spirit of accommodation to a certain extent. If 
the measure should be adopted, I shall wish it to 
be considered as an unavoidable evil, and possibly 
not the worst side of the dilemma." In other 
words, he was willing to assent silently to what 
he believed to be a great injustice to several of the 
States, provided that the bargain should be a gain 
to his own State. If Hamilton and Jefferson were 
sinners in this business, Madison will hardly pass 
for a saint. 



CHAPTER XI 

NATIONAL FINANCES — SLAVERY 

Hamilton's famous report to the First Congress, 
as secretary of the treasury, was made at the second 
session in January, 1790. Near the close of the 
previous session a petition asking for some settle- 
ment of the public debt was received and referred 
to a committee of which Madison was chairman. 
The committee reported in favor of the petition, 
and the House accordingly called upon the sec- 
retary to prepare a plan " for the support of the 
public credit." 

So far as Hamilton's funding scheme provided 
for that portion of the debt due to foreigners, it 
was accepted without demur. There could be no 
doubt that there the ostensible creditor was the real 
creditor, who should be paid in full. The report 
assumed that this was equally true of the domestic 
debt. A citizen holding a certificate of the indebt- 
edness of the government, no matter how he came 
by it, nor at what price, was entitled to payment at 
its face value. But here the question was raised, 
Was this ostensible creditor the sole creditor ? Was 
he, whose necessities had compelled him to part 
with the government's note of hand at a large dis- 



NATIONAL FINANCES 145 

count when full payment was impossible, to receive 
nothing now when at last government was able to 
pay in full ? Was it equity to let aU the loss fall 
upon the original creditor, and all the gain go to 
him who had lost nothing originally, and had only 
assumed at small cost the risk of a profitable spec- 
ulation ? Moreover it was charged, and not denied, 
that in some of these speculations there had been 
no risk whatever ; and that, so soon as the tenor 
of the report was known, fast-sailing vessels were 
dispatched from New York to the Carolinas and 
Georgia to buy up public securities held by persons 
ignorant of their recent rapid rise in value. As 
hitherto they had been worth only about fifteen 
cents on the dollar ; as upon the publication of the 
secretary's report they had risen to fifty cents on 
the dollar ; and as, if the secretary's advice should 
be taken, they would rise to a hundred cents on the 
dollar, — it would be securing what in the slang 
of the modern stock exchange is called "a good 
thing" to send agents into the rural districts in 
advance of the news to buy up government paper. 
"My soul rises indignant," exclaimed a member, 
*' at the avaricious and moral turpitude which so 
vile a conduct displays." Nor on that point did 
anybody venture then to disagree with him openly. 
But, besides the question as to who were in 
reality the public creditors, a doubt was also raised 
whether the debt ought to be paid in full to any- 
body. Every doUar of the foreign debt was for 
an actual dollar borrowed. But the domestic debt 



146 JAMES MADISON 

was not incurred to any large amount for money 
borrowed, but in payment for services, or for pro- 
visions and goods purchased, for which double, 
or more than double, prices had been exacted by 
those who exchanged them for government paper. 
If the exigencies of war had compelled the govern- 
ment to promise to pay for fifty bushels of wheat 
the price of a hundred bushels, the creditor, now 
that the government was in a condition to redeem 
its promise, was not entitled in equity to receive 
more than the actual value of the fifty bushels at 
the time of the purchase. Moreover, it was con- 
tended, there was no injustice in such a settlement 
of the debt, for the war had been carried on and 
brought to a successful end, for the benefit of the 
creditor as well as of everybody else. The argu- 
ment was analogous in a measure to that used by 
a certain class of politicians in our time, who main- 
tained that the bonds of the United States, bought 
at a discount for " greenbacks " during the late 
rebellion, should not be redeemed in gold when 
the war was over. 

The answer to all this was obvious. The nation 
must first be just by paying its debts to those 
who could present the evidence that they were its 
creditors. If, when that was done, it could afford 
to be generous, it might, if so disposed, reimburse 
those who had lost by parting with the certificates 
of debt at a discount. The government could not 
in honor go behind its own contracts. The Consti- 
tution provided that " aU debts and engagements, 



NATIONAL FINANCES 147 

entered into before the adoption of this Constitu- 
tion, shall be as valid against the United States 
under this Constitution as under the Confedera- 
tion." Here was a debt which the Confederation 
had contracted, and the federal government had 
no more right "to impair the obligation of con- 
tracts " for its own benefit than the sejjarate States 
had; and that they were expressly forbidden by 
the Constitution to do. 

Madison listened quietly day after day to the 
long and earnest debates upon the subject, and 
then advanced an entirely new proposition. He 
agreed with one party in maintaining the inviola- 
bility of contracts. The Confederacy had incurred 
a debt to its own citizens which the new govern- 
ment had agreed to assume. But he also agreed 
with the other party that there was a question as 
to whom that debt was due. Were those who now 
held the certificates entitled to the payment of 
their face value, doUar for dollar, although the cost 
to them was only somewhere from fifteen to fifty 
cents on the dollar? It was true that the original 
contract was transferable, and these present cred- 
itors held the evidence of the transfer. But did 
that transfer entitle the holder to the fuU value 
without regard to the price paid for it ? Was 
there not in equity a reserved right in the original 
holder, who, having given a full equivalent for 
the debt, had only parted with the evidence of it, 
under the compulsion of his own poverty, and the 
inability of the government at that time to meet 



148 JAMES MADISON 

its obligations? Was not this specially true in 
the case of the soldiers of the late war, to whose 
devotion and sacrifices the nation owed its exist- 
ence? 

Mr. Madison thought that an affirmative reply 
to the last two queries would present the true view 
of the case, and he proposed, therefore, to pay both 
classes of creditors, — those who now held the evi- 
dence of indebtedness, acquired by purchase at no 
matter what price ; and those who had parted with 
that evidence without receiving the amount which 
the government had promised to pay for services 
rendered. It was not, however, to be expected 
that the entire debt should be paid in full to both 
classes. That was beyond the ability of the gov- 
ernment. But it would be an equitable settlement, 
he contended, to pay the present holders the high- 
est price the certificates had ever reached, and to 
award the remainder to those who were the original 
creditors. 

This proposition received only thirteen votes out 
of forty-nine. Many of those opposed to it were 
quite ready to grant that it was hard upon the vet- 
erans of the war that they, who had received so 
little and who had borne so much, should not now 
be recognized as creditors when at last the govern- 
ment was able to pay its debts. But the House 
could not indulge in sentimental legislation. That 
would be to launch the ship of state upon another 
sea of bankruptcy. There were in the hands of 
the people tens of millions of paper money not 



NATIONAL FINANCES 149 

worth at the current rate a cent on the dollar. If 
everybody who had lost was to be paid, the point 
would soon be reached where nobody would be 
paid at all. A limit must be fixed somewhere ; 
let it be at these certificates of debt which were 
the evidence of a contract made between the gov- 
ernment and its creditors. These could be paid, 
and they should be paid, to those who were in law- 
fid possession of them. The law, if not the equity, 
of the case was clearly against Madison. That 
the government should be absolutely just to every- 
body who had ever trusted to it, and lost by it, was 
impossible. It was a bankrupt compelled to name 
its preferred creditors, and it named those whom it 
was in honor and law bound to take care of, and 
over whose claims there was, on the whole, the least 
shadow of doubt. That the loss should remain 
chiefly with the soldiers of the Revolution, and the 
gain fall chiefly to those who were shrewd enough, 
or had the means to speculate in the public funds, 
was a lamentable fact ; but to discriminate between 
them was not within the right of the government. 
That he would have had it discriminate was credit- 
able to Madison's heart; it was rather less credit- 
able to his head. 

Of course, underneath all this debate there lay 
other considerations than those merely of debtor 
and creditor, of moral and legal obligation, of pity 
for the soldiers, and of strict regard for the letter 
of a contract. Mr. Hamilton and his friends, it 
was said, were anxious to establish the public 



150 JAMES MADISON 

credit, not so much because they wished to keep 
faith with creditors as because they wished to 
strengthen the government and build up their own 
party. The reply to these accusations was, that 
the other side, under pretense of consideration for 
the soldiers and others on whom the burden of the 
war had borne most heavily, concealed hostility to 
the Constitution and a consolidated government. 
These were not reflections to be spoken of in 
debate, but they were not the less cherished, and 
gave to it piquancy and spirit. There was truth 
on both sides without doubt. 

Though defeated in this measure, Madison was 
not less determined in his opposition to the as- 
sumption of the debts of the States. Of these 
debts some States had discharged more than 
others ; and he complained, not without reason, of 
the injustice of compelling those which had borne 
their own burdens unaided to share in the obliga- 
tions which others had neglected. He was un- 
fortunate, however, in assuming a superiority for 
Virginia over some of the Eastern States, and 
especially over Massachusetts, in services rendered 
in the struggle for independence. The compari- 
son provoked a call for official inquiry ; and that 
proved that Massachusetts alone had sent more 
men into the field during the war than all the 
Southern States together. It was not much to 
be wondered at, when this fact was considered, 
that the debt of Massachusetts should be larger 
than that of Virginia by 1800,000. The difference 



NATIONAL FINANCES 151 

between Virginia and South Carolina was the same, 
the truth being that the war had cost Massachu- 
setts more money to pay her soldiers for the gen- 
eral service, and South Carolina more to repel the 
enemy upon her own soil, than it had cost Virginia 
for either purpose. Massachusetts and South Car- 
olina were again foimd acting together, simply 
because each of them had a debt — $4,000,000 — 
larger than that of any other State. The total 
debt of all the States was about 121,000,000 ; and 
as that of North Carolina, Pennsylvania, or Con- 
necticut, when added to the $8,000,000 of Massa^ 
chusetts and South Carolina, amounted to haK, or 
more, of the whole sum, there was no difficulty in 
forming a strong combination in favor of assump- 
tion. No combination, however, was strong enough 
to carry the measure on its own merits, notwith- 
standing its advocates attempted to defeat the 
funding of the domestic debt of the Federal Union 
unless the debts of the several States were assumed 
at the same time. 

The domestic debt, however, was at length pro- 
vided for, and the assumption of the debts of the 
States was rejected till that bargain, referred to in 
the preceding chapter, which gave to the Southern 
States the permanent seat of government, was con- 
cluded. It would not have been difficult, prob- 
ably, to defeat that piece of political jobbery by 
a public exposure of its terms. Why IMadison 
did not resort to it, if, as seems certain, he knew 
that such a bargain had been privately made, can 



152 JAMES MADISON 

only be conjectured. Perhaps lie saw that Ham- 
ilton, who was applauded by his friends and de- 
nounced by his enemies for his clever management, 
had, after all, only made a temporary gain ; and 
that Jefferson, whose defense was that Hamilton 
had taken advantage of his ignorance and inno- 
cence, would not, had he not been short-sighted, 
have made any defense at all. For the assumption 
of the state debts by the general government was 
only a distribution of a single local burden ; and 
this was a small price for Virginia and the other 
Southern States to pay for the permanent posses- 
sion of the federal capital. 

While these questions were pending, another 
was thrown into the House which was not disposed 
of for nearly two months. The debates upon it, 
Madison said in one of his letters, " were shame- 
fully indecent," though he thought the introduc- 
tion of the subject into Congress injudicious. 
The Yearly Meeting of Friends in New York and 
in Pennsylvania sent a memorial against the con- 
tinued toleration of the slave trade ; and this was 
followed the next day by a petition from the Penn- 
sylvania Society for the Promotion of the Abolition 
of Slavery, signed by Benjamin Franklin as presi- 
dent, asking for a more radical measure. 

'* They earnestly entreat," they said, " your serious 
attention to the subject of slavery ; that you will be 
pleased to countenance the restoration of liberty to 
these unhappy men, who alone in this land of freedom 
are degraded into perpetual bondage, and who, amidst 



SLAVERY 153 

the general joy of surrounding freemen, are groaning 
in servile subjection ; that you will devise means for 
removing this inconsistency from the character of tlie 
American people ; that you will promote mercy and 
justice towards this distressed race ; and that you will 
step to the very verge of the power vested in you for 
discouraging every species of traffic in the persons of 
our fellow-men." 

The words were probably Franklin's own, and, 
as he died a few weeks after they were written, 
they may be considered as his dying words to his 
countrymen, — counsel wise and merciful as his 
always was. 

A memorable debate followed the presentation 
of these memorials. Even in the imperfect report 
of it that has come down to us, the " shameful inde- 
cency " of which Madison speaks is visible enough. 
Franklin, venerable in years, exalted in character, 
and eminent above almost all the men of the time 
for services to his country, was sneered at for 
senility and denounced as disregarding the obliga- 
tions of the Constitution. But the wrath of the 
pro-slavery extremists was specially aroused against 
the Society of Friends, and was unrestrained by 
any considerations of either decency or truth. In 
this respect the debate was the precursor of every 
contest in Congress upon the subject that was to 
follow for the coming seventy years. The Quakers 
were the representative abolitionists of that day, and 
the measure of bitter and angry denunciation that 
was meted out to them was the same measure which, 



154 JAMES MADISON 

heaped up and overflowing, was poured out upon 
those who, in later times, took upon themselves 
the burden of the cause of the slave. The line of 
argument, the appeals to prejudice, the disregard 
of facts and the false conclusions, the misrepre- 
sentation of past history and the misapprehension 
of the future, the contempt of reason, of common 
sense, and common humanity, then laboriously and 
unscrupulously arrayed in defense of slavery, left 
nothing for the exercise of the ingenuity of mod- 
ern orators. A single dijQterence only between 
the earlier and the later time is conspicuous ; the 
" plantation manners," as they were called five and 
twenty years ago, which the Wises, the Brookses, 
the Barksdales, and the Priors of the modern 
South relied upon as potent weapons of defense 
and assault, were unknown in the earlier Con- 
gresses. 

Mr. Madison and some other members from 
the South, particularly those from Virginia, op- 
posed the majority of their colleagues, who were 
unwilling that these memorials should be referred 
to a committee. " The true policy of the Southern 
members," Madison wrote to a friend, " was to 
have let the affair proceed with as little noise as 
possible, and to have made use of the occasion to 
obtain, along with an assertion of the powers of 
Congress, a recognition of the restraints imposed 
by the Constitution." This in effect was done in 
the end, but not till near two months had passed, 



SLAVERY 156 

within which time the more violent of the Southern 
members had ample opportunity to free their minds 
and exhaust the subject. The more these people 
talked the worse it was, of course, for their cause. 
Had Madison's moderate advice been accepted 
then, and had that example been followed for the 
next sixty or seventy years, it is quite likely that 
the colored race would still be in bondage in at 
least one half of the States. But there was never 
a more notable example of manifest destiny than 
the gradual but certain progress of the opposition 
to slavery ; for there never was a system, any 
attempt to defend which showed how utterly inde- 
fensible such a system must needs be. Every 
argument advanced in its favor was so manifestly 
absurd, or so shocking to the ordinary sense of 
mankind, that the more it was discussed the more 
widespread and earnest became the opposition. 
Had the slaveholders been wise, they would never 
have opened their mouths upon the subject. But, 
like the man possessed of the devil, they never 
ceased to cry, " Let me alone ! " And the more 
they cried, the more there were who understood 
where that cry came from. 

In one respect Mr. Madison declared that the 
memorial of the Friends demanded attention. If 
the American flag was used to protect foreigners 
in carrying on the slave trade in other countries, 
that was a proper subject for the consideration of 
Congress. " K this is the case," he said, " is 



156 JAMES MADISON 

there any person of humanity that would not wish 
to prevent them ? " ^ But he recognized the lim- 
itations of the Constitution in relation to the im- 
portation of slaves into the United States, and the 
want of any authority in the letter of the Consti- 
tution, or of any wish on the part of Congress, to 
interfere with slavery in the States. On these 
points he would have a decisive declaration, with- 
out agitation, and with as little discussion as possi- 
ble, and there would have dropped the subject. It 
only needed, he evidently thought, that everybody, 
North and South, should understand the Constitu- 
tion to be a mutual agreement to let slavery alto- 
gether alone, when the bargain would be on both 
sides faithfully adhered to. 

This was all very well with the numerous per- 
sons who were quite indifferent to the subject, or 
who thought it very unreasonable in the blacks not 
to be quite willing to remain slaves a few hundred 
years longer. But there were two other classes 
to reckon with, and Mr. Madison was not much 
inclined to be patient with either of them. To let 
the subject alone was precisely what the hot-headed 

^ The most serious difficulty in the way of the final suppression 
of the African slave trade in the present century was, that it could 
be carried on without molestation in American bottoms, under the 
American flag. The ruling power in the United States, from 1787 
to 1860, was never willing that their own cruisers should meddle 
with the slavers, and resented as an insult to the flag the search, 
by the cruisers of other powers, of any vessel under the American 
flag, though it might be absolutely certain that she had come 
straight from the coast of Africa, and that her " between-decks " 
was crowded full of negroea to be sold as slaves in Cuba. 



SLAVERY 157 

members from the South were incapable of doing 
then, as they proved to be incapable of doing for 
the next seventy years. On the other hand, all 
the petitioners could really hope for was that there 
should be discussion. The galleries were crowded 
at those earliest debates, as they continued to be 
crowded on all such occasions in subsequent years. 
Many went to learn what could be said on behalf 
of slavery, who came away convinced that the least 
said the better. Agitation might disturb the har- 
mony of the Union, which was Madison's dread ; 
it might lead to the death of an abolitionist, as it 
sometimes did in later times ; but it was sure in 
the end to be the death of slavery, though its short- 
sighted defenders could never understand why. 
They could never be made to see that its most 
dangerous foes were the friends of its own house- 
hold, who could not hold their tongues ; that for 
their case all wisdom was epitomized in the vulgar 
caution " to lie low and keep dark ; " that the ex- 
posure of the true character of slavery must needs 
be its destruction, and that nothing so exposed it 
as any attempt to defend it. Slavery was quite 
safe under the Constitution, as Mr. Madison inti- 
mated, if its friends would only leave it there and 
claim no other protection. 

Advocates are never wanting in any court who 
believe that the most effective line of defense is 
to abuse the plaintiff. The Quakers, it was said, 
" notwithstanding their outward pretenses," had 
no " more virtue or religion than other people, 



158 JAMES MADISON 

nor perhaps so much." They had not made the 
Constitution, nor risked their lives and fortunes 
by fighting for their country. Why should they 
"set themselves up in such a particular manner 
against slavery " ? Did they not know that the 
Bible not only allowed but commended it, " from 
Genesis to Kevelation"? That the Saviour had 
permitted it? That the Apostles, in spreading 
Christianity, had never preached against it ? That 
it had been — the illustration was not altogether a 
happy one — " no novel doctrine since the days of 
Cain " ? The condition of these American slaves 
was said to be one of great happiness and comfort ; 
yet almost in the same breath it was asserted that 
to excite in their minds any hope of change would 
lead to the most disastrous consequences, and pos- 
sibly to massacre. The memorialists were bidden 
to remember that, even if slavery " were an evil, 
it was one for which there was no remedy ; " for 
that reason the North had acquiesced in it ; "a 
compromise was made on both sides, — we took 
each other, with our mutual bad habits and respec- 
tive evils, for better, for worse ; the Northern States 
adopted us with our slaves, and we adopted them 
with their Quakers." Without such a compromise 
there could have been no Union, and any interfer- 
ence now with slavery by the government would 
end in a civil war. These people were meddling 
•with what was none of their business, and exciting 
the slaves to insurrection. Yet how forbearing 
were the people of the Southern States who, not- 



SLAVERY 159 

withstanding all this, " had not required the assist- 
ance of Congress to exterminate the Quakers ! " 

This was not conciliatory. Those who had been 
disposed at the beginning to meet the petitions with 
a quiet reply that the subject was out of the juris- 
diction of Congress were now provoked to give 
them a much warmer reception. They could not 
listen patiently to the abuse of the Quakers, and, 
though they might acquiesce in the toleration of 
slavery, they were not inclined to have it crammed 
down their throats as a wise, beneficent, and con- 
sistent condition of society under a republican 
government. Even Madison, who at first was 
most anxious that nothing should be said or done 
to arouse agitation, while acknowledging that all 
citizens might rightfully appeal to Congress for a 
redress of what they considered grievances, was 
moved at last to say that the memorial of the 
Friends was " well worthy of consideration." 
While admitting that under the Constitution the 
slave trade coidd not be prohibited for twenty 
years, " yet," he declared, " there are a variety of 
ways by which it [Congress] could countenance 
the abolition, and regulations might be made in 
relation to the introduction of [slavery] into the 
new States to be formed out of the western terri- 
tory." 

Gerry was still more emphatic in the assertion 
of the right of interference. He boldly asserted 
that " flagrant acts of cruelty " were committed in 
carrying on the African slave trade ; and, while 



160 JAMES MADISON" 

nobody proposed to violate the Constitution, " that 
we have a right to regulate this business is as 
clear as that we have any right whatever; nor 
has the contrary been shown by anybody who has 
spoken on the occasion." Nor did he stop there. 
He told the slaveholders that the value of their 
slaves in money was only about ten million dollars, 
and that Congress had the right to propose " to 
purchase the whole of them ; and their resources 
in the western territory might furnish them with 
the means." The Southern members would, per- 
haps, have been startled by such a proposition 
as this, had he not immediately added that " he 
did not intend to suggest a measure of this kind ; 
he only instanced these particulars to show that 
Congress certainly had a right to intermeddle in 
the business." It is quite likely, had he pushed 
such a measure with his well-known zeal and deter- 
mination, that it would have been at least received 
with a good deal of favor ; and, as the admirers of 
Jefferson are tenacious of his fame as the author 
of the original Northwest Ordinance, so Gerry, 
had he seriously and earnestly urged the policy 
of using the proceeds of the sales of territorial 
lands to remunerate the owners of slaves for their 
liberation, would have left behind him a more fra- 
grant memory than that which clings to him as a 
minister to France, and as the " Gerrymandering " 
governor of Massachusetts. The debate, how- 
ever, came to an end at last with no other result 
than that which would have been reached at the 



SLAVERY 161 

beginning without debate, except, perhaps, that the 
vote in favor of the reports upon the memorials 
was smaller than it might have been had there 
been no discussion. 

Within less than two years, however, Warner 
Mifflin of Delaware, an eminent member of the 
Society of Friends, who was one of the first, if 
not the first, of that society to manumit his own 
slaves, petitioned Congress to take some measure 
for general emancipation. The petition was en- 
tered upon the journal ; but on a subsequent day 
a North Carolina member, Mr. Steele, said that, 
" after what had passed at New York on this sub- 
ject, he had hoped the House woidd have heard no 
more of it ; " and he moved that the petition be 
returned to Mifflin and be expunged from the jour- 
nal. Fisher Ames explained in a rather apologetic 
tone that he had presented the petition at Mr. 
Mifflin's request, because the member from Dela- 
ware was absent, and because he believed in the 
right of petition, though "he considered it as 
totally inexpedient to interfere with the subject." 
The House agreed that the petition should be 
returned, and Steele then withdrew the motion to 
expunge it from the journal. 

In the next Congress, eighteen months after- 
ward, the House took up the subject of the slave 
trade, apparently of its own motion, and a bill was 
passed prohibiting the carrying on of that traffic 
from the ports of the United -States in foreign 
vessels. The question was as inexorable as death, 



162 JAJVIES MADISON 

and the diiference in regard to it then was pre- 
cisely what it was in the final discussion of the 
next century which settled it forever. One set of 
men was given over to perdition if they dared so 
much as talk ; the other set talked all the more, 
and went to the very verge of the Constitution in 
act all the more, because they were bidden neither 
to speak nor to move. Courage was not one of 
\/ Madison's marked characteristics, but he never 
showed more of it than in his hostility to slavery. 

At the third session of the First Congress, which 
had adjourned from New York to Philadelphia, 
where it met in December, 1790, Madison led his 
party in opposition to the establishment of a na- 
tional bank, which Hamilton had recommended ; 
and again, as in the adjustment of the domestic 
debt, he and his party were defeated. He com- 
pared the advantages and the disadvantages of 
banks, and possibly he did not satisfy himself, as 
he certainly did not the other side, that the weight 
of the argument was against their utility. At any 
rate, he fell back upon the Constitution as his 
strongest position. To incorporate a bank was 
not, he maintained, among the powers conferred 
upon Congress. The Federalists, who were begin- 
ning to recognize him as the leader of the opposi- 
tion, were quite ready to accept that challenge. 
" Little doubt remains," said Fisher Ames in rising 
to reply, " with respect to the utility of banks." 
Assuming that to be settled, — whether he meant, 
or not, that such was the conclusion to be drawn 





^■c^^t^^ y^ 



-t^'^ y^^>i..A^ 



'■J 



i 






SLAVERY 163 

from Madison's argument on that point, — he 
addressed himself to the constitutional question. 
If the incorporation of a bank was forbidden by 
the Constitution, there was an end of the matter. 
If it was not forbidden, but if Congress may exer- 
cise powers not expressly bestowed upon it, and if 
by a bank some of the things which the federal 
government had to do could be best done, it would 
be not only right but wise to establish such an 
agency. This was the burden of the argument of 
the Federalists, and Madison and his friends had 
no sufficient answer. The bill was at length passed 
by a vote of thirty-nine to twenty. 

But it had still to pass the ordeal of the cabinet. 
The President was not disposed to rely upon his 
own judgment either one way or the other. He 
asked, therefore, for the written opinions of the 
secretaries of the treasury and of state, Hamilton 
and Jefferson, and the attorney-general, Eandolph. 
The same request was made to Madison, probably 
more because Washington held his ability and 
knowledge of constitutional law in high esteem 
than because of the prominent part he had taken 
in the debate. Hamilton's argmnent in favor of 
the bill was an answer to the papers of the three 
other gentlemen, and was accepted as conclusive 
by the President. 



CHAPTER XII 
FEDERALISTS AND REPUBLICANS 

Madison was a Federalist until, unfortunately, 
he drifted into the opposition. He was swept 
away partly, perhaps, by the influence of personal 
friends, particularly of Jefferson, and partly by the 
influence of locality, — that " go-with-the-State " 
doctrine, which is a harmless kind of patriotism 
when kept within proper limits, but dangerous in 
a mixed government like ours when unrestrained. 
Had he been born in a free State it seems more 
than probable that he would never have been 
President ; but it is quite possible that his place 
in the history of his country would have been 
higher. The better part of his life was before he 
became a party leader. As his career is followed 
the presence of the statesman grows gradually 
dimmer in the shadow of the successful politician. 

In the course of the three sessions of the First 
Congress the line was distinctly drawn between 
the Federal and Republican (or Democratic) par- 
ties. The Federalists, it was evident, had suc- 
ceeded in firmly uniting thirteen separate States 
into one great nation, or into what, in due time, 
was sure to become a great nation. It was no 



FEDERALISTS AND REPUBLICANS 163 

longer a loose assemblage of thirteen independent 
bodies, revolving, indeed, around a central power, 
but with a centrifugal motion that might at any- 
time send them flying off into space, or destroy 
them by collisions at various tangents. Those who 
opposed the Federalists, however, had no fear of 
a tendency to tangents; the danger was, as they 
believed, of too much centripetal force, and that 
the circling planets might fall into the central sun 
and disappear altogether. Even if there were no 
flying off into space, and no falling into the sun, 
they had no faith in this sort of political astro- 
nomy. They were unwilling to float in fixed orbits 
obedient to a supreme law other than their own. 

There is no need to doubt the honesty of either 
party then, whatever came to pass in lat^r years. 
Nor, however, is there any more doubt now which 
was the wiser. Before the end of the century the 
administration of government was wrested from 
the hands of those who had created the Union ; 
and within fifteen years more the Federal party, 
imder that name, had disappeared. It would not 
be quite just to say that they were opposed for no 
better reason than because they were in power. 
But it is quite true that the principles and the 
policy of the Federalists siu-Anved the party organ- 
ization ; and they not only surnved, but, so far 
as the opposite party was ever of service to the 
country, it was when that party adopted the fed- 
eral measures. It was in accordance with the 
early principles of Federalism that the republic 



166 JAMES MADISON 

was defended and saved in the war of 1860-65 ; 
as it was the principles of the Democratic state- 
rights party, administered by a slaveholding oli- 
garchy, that made that war inevitable. 

Hamilton said, in the well-known Carrington 
letter in the spring of 1792, that he was thor- 
oughly convinced by Madison's course in the late 
Congress that he, " cooperating with Mr. Jefferson, 
is at the head of a faction decidedly hostile to me 
and my administration, and actuated by views, in 
my judgment, subversive of the principles of good 
government, and dangerous to the union, peace, 
and happiness of the country." At first he was 
disposed to believe, because of his " previous im- 
pressions of the fairness of Mr. Madison's char- 
acter," that there was nothing personal or factious 
in this hostility. But he soon changed his mind. 
Up to the time of the meeting of the First Con- 
gress there had always been perfect accord be- 
tween them, and Hamilton accepted his seat in 
the cabinet " under the full persuasion," he said, 
" that from similarity of thinking, conspiring with 
personal good-will, I should have the fii'm support 
of Mr. Madison in the general course of my admin- 
istration." But when he found in Madison his 
most determined opponent, either open or covert, 
in the most important measures he urged upon 
Congress, — the settlement of the domestic debt, 
the assumption of the debts of the States, and the 
establishment of a national bank, — he was com- 
pelled to seek for other than public motives for 



FEDERALISTS AND REPUBLICANS 167 

this opposition. " It had been," he declared, 
" more uniform and persevering than I have been 
able to resolve into a sincere difference of opinion. 
I cannot persuade myself that Mr. Madison and I, 
whose politics had formerly so much the same 
point of departure, should now diverge so widely 
in our opinions of the measures which are proper 
to be pursued." 

In the letter from which these extracts are 
made Jefferson and Madison are painted as al- 
most equally black, though the color was laid the 
thicker on Jefferson, if there was any difference. 
Hamilton seemed to think that, if Jefferson was 
the more malicious, Madison was the more artful. 
He is accused of an attempt to get the better of 
the secretary of the treasury by a trick which 
was dishonorable in itself, and at the same time 
an abuse of the confidence reposed in him by 
"Washington. Before sending in his message at 
the opening of the Second Congress the President 
submitted it to Madison, who, Hamilton declares, 
so altered it, by transposing a passage and by the 
addition of a few words, that the President was 
made to seem, unconsciously to himself, to approve 
of Jefferson's proposal to establish the same unit 
for coins as for weights. This would have been to 
disapprove of the proposal of the secretary of the 
treasury that the dollar should remain the unit 
of coinage. The statement rests on Hamilton's 
assertion ; and as he had forgotten the words which 
made the change he complained of, and as the 



\ 



168 JAMES MADISON 

message was restored to its original form by the 
President when its possible interpretation was 
pointed out to him, it is impossible now to judge 
whether Madison may not have been quite inno- 
cent of the intention imputed to him. It is plain 
enough, however, that Hamilton was sore and dis- 
appointed at Madison's conduct, and that he was 
quick to seize upon any incident that justified him 
in saying, " The opinion I once entertained of the 
candor and simplicity and fairness of Mr. Madi- 
son's character has, I acknowledge, given way to 
a decided opinion that it is one of a peculiarly 
artificial and complicated kind." To justify this 
opinion, and as an evidence of how bitter Madi- 
son's political and personal enmity toward him had 
become, he refers in the same letter to Madison's 
relation to Freneau and his paper, " The National 
Gazette." " As the coadjutor of Jefferson," he 
wrote, " in the establishment of this paper, I in- 
clude Mr. Madison in the consequences imputable 
to it." ^ 

The story of Freneau need not be repeated here 
at length, having been already told in another 
volume of this series of biographies. If there were 
anything in that affair, however, for which Jeffer- 
son could be fairly called to account, Madison may 
be held as not less responsible. When the charge 
was made that he had a sinister motive in procur- 
ing for Freneau a clerkship in the State Depart- 
ment, and in aiding him to establish a newspaper, 
Madison frankly related the facts in a letter to 



FEDERALISTS AND REPUBLICANS 169 

Edmund Randolph. He had nothing to deny 
except to repel with some indignation the charge 
that he had helped to establish the journal in order 
that it might " sap the Constitution," or that there 
was the slightest expectation or intention on his 
part of any relation between the State Department 
and the newspaper. Freneau was one of his col- 
lege friends, a deserving man, to whom he was 
attached, and whom he was glad to help. There 
was nothing improper in commending one well 
qualified to discharge its duties for the post of 
translator in a government office ; and as those 
duties, for which the yearly salary was only two 
hundred and fifty dollars, were light, there was no 
good reason why the clerk should not find other 
emjiloyment for leisure hours. 

If Mr. Madison, having said this, had stopped 
there, his critics would have been silenced. But 
when he added that he advised his friend with 
another motive besides that of helping him to 
start a newspaper, then, as the expressive modern 
phrase is, he "gave himself away." There is a 
feeling, common even in those early and innocent 
days when such things were rare, that the editor, 
whose daily bread, whether it be cake or crust, 
comes from the bounty of the man in office or 
other place of power, — that an editor so fed, and 
perhaps fattened, is only a servant bought at a 
price. Madison said that to help a needy man 
whom he held in high esteem was his "primary 
and governing motive." But he adds: "That, as a 



170 JAMES MADISON 

consequential one, I entertained hopes that a free 
paper . . . would be an antidote to the doctrines 
and discourses circulated in favor of monarchy 
and aristocracy ; would be an acceptable vehicle of 
public information in many places not sufficiently 
supplied with it, — this also is a certain truth." 
What was this but an acknowledgment of the 
essential truth of the charge brought against Jef- 
ferson and himself? Not that he might not de- 
voutly hope for an antidote to the poisonous doc- 
trines of monarchy and aristocracy, though in very 
truth the existence of any such poison was only 
one of the maggots which, bred in the muck of 
party strife, had found a lodgment in his brain ; 
not that it was not a commendable public spirit 
to wish for a good newspaper to circulate where it 
was most needed; not that it was not a most excel- 
lent thing in him to hold out a helping hand to the 
friend who had been less fortunate than himself, — 
but that, in helping his friend to a clerkship in a 
department of the government, his motive was in 
part that the possession of a public office woidd 
enable the man to establish a party organ. That 
was precisely the point of the charge which he 
seems to have failed to apprehend, — that public 
patronage was used at his suggestion to further 
party ends. 

Freneau had intended to start a newspaper 
somewhere in New Jersey. Whether or not that 
known intention suggested that the project coidd 
be better carried out in Philadelphia, and a clerk- 



FEDERALISTS AND REPUBLICAXS 171 

ship in the State Department woukl be an aid to 
it, the change of plan was adopted and the clerk- 
ship bestowed upon him. The paper — the first 
number of which appeared five days after his ap- 
pointment — was, as it was known that it would 
be, an earnest defender of Jefferson and his friends, 
and a formidable opponent of Hamilton and his 
party. The logical conclusion was that the man, 
being put in place for a purpose, was diligent in 
using the opportunities the place afforded him to 
fulfill the hopes of those to whom he was indebted. 
Madison and Jefferson both denied, with much 
heat and indignation, that they had anything to 
do with the editorial conduct of the paper. No 
doubt they spoke the truth. They had to draw 
the line somewhere ; they drew it there ; and an 
exceedingly sharp and fine line it was. For it is 
plain that Freneau knew very well what he was 
about and what was expected of him, and his 
powerful friends knew very well that he knew it. 
They covdd feel in him the most implicit confi- 
dence as an untamed and untamable democrat, and 
one, perhaps, whose gratitude would be kept alive 
by the remembrance of poverty and the hope of 
future favors. There was clearly no need of a 
board of directors for the editorial supervision 
of " The National Gazette," and it was quite safe 
to deny that any existed. The fact, nevertheless, 
remained that a seat had been given the editor at 
Mr. Jefferson's elbow. 

Three months before Madison heard that his 



172 JAMES MADISON 

relation to Freneau was bringing him under pub- 
lic censure, he showed an evident interest in the 
" Gazette " hardly consistent with his subsequent 
avowal of having nothing to do with its manage- 
ment. In a letter to Jefferson he refers to the 
postage on newspapers established by the bill for 
the regulation of post-offices, and fears that it will 
prove a grievance in the loss of subscribers. He 
suggests that a notice be given that the papers 
" will not be put into the mail, but sent as hereto- 
fore^'' meaning by that, probably, that they would 
be sent under the franks of members of Congress, 
or by any other chance that might offer. " WiU 
you," he adds, "hint this to Freneau? His sub- 
scribers in this quarter seem pretty well satisfied 
with the degree of regularity and safety with which 
they get the papers, and highly pleased with the 
paper itself." This was careful dry-nursing for 
the bantling which had been provided with so com- 
fortable a cradle in the State Department. 

The political casuist of our time may wonder 
at the importance which attached to this Freneau 
affair. We are taught that " there were giants in 
those days," but we may also remember that in the 
modern science of " practical politics " they were 
as babes and sucklings. Madison was making 
good his place as a leader of the opposition hardly 
second to Jefferson himself. As with Hamilton, 
so with the Federalists generally, he fell more 
even than Jefferson fell in their esteem. He fell 
more, because he had farther to fall. No man 



FEDERALISTS AND REPUBLICANS 173 

had been more earnest than he for a consolidated 
government ; no one had shown more activity to 
bring about a convention to frame a federal Con- 
stitution ; and when at last that work was done, 
no one, not even Hamilton himself, was more zeal- 
ous to convince his countrymen that national sal- 
vation depended upon union, and that union was 
hopeless unless the Constitution should be adopted. 
The disappointment and the shock were all the 
greater when he gradually drew off from those who 
had hitherto counted him as on their side. They 
could not understand how he coidd find so much 
to oppose in the legitimate administration — as 
they believed it to be — of a Constitution he had 
done so much to create, and the beneficent results 
of which he had foreseen and foretold. Or, if 
they imderstood him, it was on the supposition 
that he had thrown his convictions and his princi- 
ples to the winds, abandoned his old friends and 
attached himself to new ones, from motives of 
personal ambition. This, of course, may not have 
been absolutely just. It is quite possible that he 
did not deliberately surrender his principles, but 
persuaded himself that he was as true as ever to 
the Constitution. It is, nevertheless, certainly true 
that the men with whom he was now acting were 
the men who, having failed to prevent the adop- 
tion of the Constitution, now aimed, by zealous 
endeavors for an assumed strict construction, to 
defeat the purpose for which it was framed.^ 

^ "I reverence the Constitution," said Fisher Ames in debate, 



174 JAMES MADISON 

Naturally liis motives were suspected, and his 
conduct narrowly watched. Jefferson's influence 
over him was known to be great, and Jefferson had 
had nothing to do with the framing of the Consti- 
tution, had been doubtful at first of its wisdom, 
and gave his assent to it at last with many doubts. 
The Anti-Federal party was growing gradually 
stronger in Virginia as in all the Southern States ; 
most of Madison's warmest personal friends, as 
well as Jefferson, were of that party. What 
chance would he have in the public career he had 
marked out for himself if his path and theirs led 
in opposite directions ? How much he was influ- 
enced by these considerations it is impossible to 
tell; perhaps he himseK could not have told. 
Perhaps they were not even considerations, but 
only unconscious influences, which he would have 
thrown behind him had he recognized them as pos- 
sible motives. To others, however, whether justly 
or not, they were quite sufficient to explain his 
course, and, once accepted, no other explanation 
was sought for. The appointment of Freneau to 
office at Madison's request, followed by the almost 
immediate appearance of a violent party organ, 

" and I readily admit that the frequent appeal to that as a stand- 
ard proceeds from a respectfid attachment to it. So far it is 
a source of agreeable reflection. But I feel very different emo- 
tions when I find it almost daily resorted to in questions of little 
importance. When by strained and fancifid constructions it is 
made an instrument of casuistry, it is to be feared it may lose 
something in our minds in point of certainty, and more in point 
of dignity." 



FEDERALISTS AND REPUBLICANS 175 

edited by this clerk in Mr. JefiPerson's department, 
was quite enough to raise an outcry among the 
Federalists ; and Madison's explanation, when it 
came to be known, of his share in that business, 
did not add to his reputation either for frankness 
or political rectitude. Perhaps it was at first more 
the seeming want of frankness that disgusted his 
old friends. They could have more readily for- 
given him had he openly declared that he had gone 
over to the enemy, instead of professing to find in 
the Constitution sufficient ground for hostility to 
their measures. These constitutional scruples they 
sometimes thought so thin a disguise of other mo- 
tives as to be better deserving of ridicule than of 
argument. 

All he said and did was watched with suspicion. 
In the interval between the First and Second Con- 
gresses, he and Jefferson made a tour through some 
of the Eastern States, as they said, for relaxation 
and pleasure. But it was looked upon as a strategic 
movement. Interviews between them and Living- 
ston and Burr in New York were reported to Ham- 
ilton as "a passionate courtship." They visited 
Albany, it was said, " under the pretext of a botani- 
cal excursion," but in reality to meet with Clinton. 
Botany naturally suggests agriculture, and as they 
continued on their journey into New England they 
were accused of " sowing tares " as they traveled. 
Such treachery would have been considered as 
aggravated by hypocrisy had it been known then 
that on his return Mr. Madison wrote to his father 



176 JAMES MADISON 

from New York : " The tour I lately made with 
Mr. Jefferson, of which I have given the outlines 
to my brother, was a very agreeable one, and car- 
ried us through interesting country, new to us 
both." This was cool, if the journey really was a 
political reconnoissance. 

Though Mr. Madison may have been for a time 
a special target for this kind of partisan rancor, it 
was by no means confined to him. Jefferson had 
a very pretty talent for exasperating his enemies, 
and nobody could long divide with him the distinc- 
tion of being the best hated man in the country. 
A curious instance of it was given when the ques- 
tion was discussed, both in the First and Second 
Congresses, as to the successor to the presidency in 
case the office should become vacant by the deaths 
of both President and Vice-President. A bill was 
sent down from the Senate to the House providing, 
in case such a thing should ever happen, that the 
president 'pro tempore of the Senate, or, should the 
Senate have no temporary president, the speaker 
of the House of Representatives, should succeed 
to the vacant office. The House sent back the bill 
with an amendment substituting the secretary of 
state for the succession in the possible vacancy 
instead of the presiding officers of the two houses 
of Congress. Madison was very earnest for this 
amendment, but the Senate rejected it, and the 
House finally assented to the original bill. It was 
shown in the course of the debate that according 
to the doctrine of chances the office of president 



FEDERALISTS AND REPUBLICANS 177 

woliJd not devolve, through the accident of death, 
upon a third person oftener than once in about 
eight hundred and forty years. The rejection of 
the amendment naming the secretary of state as 
the proper person to succeed to the presidency, 
in the improbable event supposed, was neverthe- 
less resented by the Republicans as a direct reflec- 
tion upon Mr. Jefferson. Nor did the Federalists 
deny it. With grim humor they seized upon the 
opportunity, apparently, to announce that not with 
their consent should he ever be president, even by 
accident, though he should wait literally eight hun- 
di-ed and forty years. It was a long-range shot, 
but there could not have been one better aimed. 

If before there had been some room for hope, 
Madison's course in the Second Congress left no 
doubt as to which party he had cast his lot with. 
His hostility to the establishment of a bank was, 
he thought, justified by what he saw at the open- 
ing of the subscription books in New York. The 
anxiety to get possession of the stock was not to 
him an evidence of public confidence, and an argu- 
ment, therefore, in favor of such an institution, 
but " a mere scramble for so much public plun- 
der." He could only see that " stock-jobbing 
drowns every other subject. The coffee-house is in 
an eternal buzz with the gamblers." "It pretty 
clearly appears also," he said, "in what propor- 
tions the public debt lies in the country, what sort 
of hands holding it, and by whom the people 
of the United States are to be governed." Here, 



178 JAMES MADISON 

perhaps, was one cause of his hostility to Hamil- 
L's financial policy. Its immediate benefi w^ 
for that class whose pecuniary stake in the stability 
of the government was the largest. This class was 
chiefly in the Northern States, where capital was in 
money and was always on the lookout for safe and 
profitable investment. At the South, capital was 
in slaves and land, and could not be easily changed. 
If the Bank and the bondholders were to exer- 
cise - as he feared they would, and as he beheved 
that the Federalists meant they should -a con- 
trolling influence over the government, it was car- 
tainly pretty apparent " by whom the people of the 
United States were to be governed." It would be 
the North, not the South ; and he was a Yirgiman 
before he was a Unionist. ^ 

Perhaps he was influenced by this consideration 
when he proposed that the payment of the domes- 
tic debt should be divided between those who had 
originally held, and those who had acquired by 
purchase, the certificates of indebtedness. The 
public creditors would in that case have been 
more widely distributed in different sections of the 
country and among different classes. The thought, 
at any rate, does not seem to have been a new one 
when he saw and reported the eagerness with 
which the bank stock was sought for, denounced 
it as stock-jobbing and gambling, and indignantly 
reflected that in these men he saw the future g^- 
ernors of the country, and particularly of his own 
people. No doubt there was a good deal of specu- 



FEDERALISTS AND REPUBLICANS 179 

lation ; and, as at all such times, there were a few 
who made fortunes, while many, who had at first 
much money and no stock, next much stock and no 
money, had at last neither stock nor money. But 
Mr. Madison's indignation was quite wasted, and 
his fears quite unfounded. Neither the stock-job- 
bers, the Bank, nor the bondholders ever usurped 
the government, whatever may have been Hamil- 
ton's hopes or schemes, if he had any other than 
to serve his country. The money-power of the 
North built cities and ships, factories and towns, 
and stretched out its hands to the great lakes and 
over the broad prairies, to add to its dominion, 
to extend its civilization, and to give to labor and 
industry their due reward. It was the South that 
devoted itself to the business of politics, and, united 
by stronger bonds than can ever be forged of gold 
alone, soon entered into possession of the govern- 
ment, which it retained and used for its own inter- 
ests, without regard to the interests or the rights of 
the North, for nearly three quarters of a century. 
Mr. Madison had no prescience of any such future 
in the history of the country, nor, indeed, then 
had anybody else. He may have really believed 
that the holders of a large public debt and the 
owners of a great national bank, through which 
the monetary affairs of the country could be con- 
trolled, were aiming to lay hold of the government. 
If all this were true, imminent peril was impending 
over republican institutions. The inconsistency of 
which Hamilton accused Madison was therefore not 



180 JAMES MADISON 

necessarily a crime. It might even be a virtue, and 
Madison be applauded for his courage in avowing a 
change of opinion, if he saw in the practical appli- 
cation of Hamilton's principles dangers that had 
not occurred to him when looking at them only 
as abstract theories. But the Federalists believed 
that Madison, governed by these purely selfish mo- 
tives, sacrificed his convictions of what was best 
for the country that he might secure for himself a 
position on what he foresaw was the winning side. 
It is quite likely that the more pronounced enmity 
he showed towards Hamilton during the second ses- 
sion of Congress was due in some measure to his 
knowledge of this feeling towards himself among 
Federalists. He seemed, at any rate, to be ani- 
mated by something more than the proverbial zeal 
of the new convert. If it was not always shown 
in debate, it lurked in his letters. Anything that 
came from the secretary, or anything that favored 
the secretary's measures, was sure to be opposed 
by him. He was not, of course, always in the 
wrong, and sometimes he was very right. There 
was a manifest disposition on the part of the Fed- 
eralists in the House to defer to the secretary in a 
way to provoke opposition from those who did not 
share in their estimate of his great ability. There 
was some resentment, for example, when it was 
proposed that Congress should submit to the secre- 
tary the question of ways and means to carry on 
the Indian war at the West, after St. Clair's dis- 
astrous defeat, and when, a few days later, it was 



FEDERALISTS AND REPUBLICANS 181 

suggested that lie should be called upon to report 
a plan for the reduction of the public debt. Mem- 
bers, chief among them Madison, thought that they 
were quite capable of discharging the duties belong- 
ing to their branch of the government without in- 
structions from a head of department whom many 
of them looked upon as only an official subordinate 
of Congress. For the same reason they refused 
with prompt decision to permit the secretary to 
appear upon the floor of the House to explain 
some proposed measure. In the Carrington letter 
Hamilton said that he had " openly declared " a 
" determination to treat him [Madison] as a politi- 
cal enemy." He probably took care that Madison 
should hear of it, for he was not a man who made 
idle threats. He was sometimes arrogant and over- 
bearing in manner, was always ready for a fight, 
which he rather preferred to quietude, and had lit- 
tle disposition to spare an enemy. These were not 
conciliating qualities likely to temper the asperi- 
ties of political warfare, and they may have pro- 
voked even Madison, mild-mannered and almost 
timid as he was, to unusual heat. 

All this, of course, is aside from the question 
whether the party, to which Mr. Madison had given 
his allegiance, was right or wrong. On that point 
there may be an honest difference of opinion. It 
is apart also from the question whether a man may 
not honestly change sides in politics, notwithstand- 
ing the suspicion that always follows him who 
runs from one side to the other, when in neither has 



182 JAMES MADISON 

there been any change in principles or measures. 
It is quite possible that he may be governed by the 
most sincere convictions; and if he obeys them 
and abandons old friends for new ones, or con- 
sents to be friendless, it is the strongest proof the 
statesman or politician can give of a moral courage 
which ought to gain for him all the more respect. 
But whether that respect must be denied to Mr. 
Madison, because he was governed by other and 
lower motives, is the question. There had been no 
change of political principles either in the party he 
had left or the party he had joined ; but each was 
striving with all its might to adapt the old doc- 
trines to the altered condition of affairs under the 
new Union. The change was wholly in Mr. Madi- 
son. That which had been white to him was now 
black ; that which had been black was now as the 
driven snow. Why was this? Had he come to 
see that in all those years he had been wrong ? Or 
had he suddenly learned, not that he was wi'ong, 
but that he had mistaken a straight and narrow 
path for the broad road which would lead to the 
goal he was seeking ? These are not pleasant ques- 
tions. He had served his country well ; one does 
not like to doubt whether it was with a selfish 
rather than a noble purpose. But of any public 
man who changed front as he changed, the ques- 
tion always will be. What moved him ? Not to ask 
it in regard to Madison is to drop out of sight 
the turning-point of his career ; not to consider it 



FEDERALISTS AND REPUBLICANS 183 

is to leave unheeded essential light upon one side 
of his character. For his own fortunes the choice 
he made was judicious, if to " gain the whole 
world " is always the wisest and best thing to do. 
He gained his world, and was wise and virtuous 
in his generation according to the vote of a large 
majority. Whether that decision still holds good 
it is not so easy to say ; probably it does, however ; 
for the popular estimate of men often remains un- 
changed long after the judgment upon the events 
which gave them celebrity is completely reversed. 
But history, in the long rvm, weighs with even 
scales ; and the verdict on Madison's character 
usually comes with that pitiful recommendation to 
mercy from a jury loath to condemn. Admiration 
for his great services in the Constitutional Con- 
vention and after it, when its work was presented 
to the people for their approval, has never been 
withheld ; upon his official integrity and his high 
sense of honor in all his personal relations, except 
when obligation to party may have overshadowed 
it, there rests no cloud ; and his intellectual power 
is never questioned. One having these recognized 
qualities, and who for five and twenty years was 
generally high in office, must needs be held in 
high estimation, especially in a new country where 
fame, like everything else, is cheap. Nevertheless, 
impartial historians, who venture to believe that 
nature admits of imperfections in a native of Vir- 
ginia, declare their conviction that Mr. Madison 



184 JAMES MADISON \. 

either wanted the strength and courage to resist 

the influence of those about him, or that the ambi- ■ 

tion of the politician was strong enough to over- { 

come any consideration of principles that might 

stand in his way. I 



CHAPTER XIII 

FRENCH POLITICS 

If any proof were wanting of how completely 
Madison had gone over to the opposition, he gave 
it in the memorable attack upon the secretary of 
the treasury in the spring of 1793, within four 
days of the close of the second session of the Sec- 
ond Congress. It was hoped by that proceeding 
to overwhelm Hamilton with disgrace, and that 
the President would feel himself obliged to expel 
him from the cabinet. When the resolutions with 
this aim were offered, a member said that delicacy, 
decency, and every rule of justice had been vio- 
lated ; " a more unhandsome proceeding he had 
never seen in Congress ; " he might have remained 
a member to this day, and, save for the attempts 
in our time to expel John Quincy Adams and 
Joshua R. Giddings, not have changed his opinion. 

In the course of the preceding year Hamilton, 
under various signatures, had met his opponents 
in the newspapers. But it was a veil, not a visor, 
behind which he fought ; for everybody knew 
from whom came the vigorous blows that he dealt 
about him right and left. It was a boast always 
of Jefferson that he never condescended to news- 



I 



186 JAMES MADISON 

paper controversy ; but it was pretty well under- 
stood that he himself did not enter upon that 
rather unsatisfactory mode of warfare because he 
preferred the safer method of fighting by proxy. 
Hamilton never was in doubt as to who was his 
real antagonist, and he aimed his blows over the 
heads of his petty assailants to where he knew 
they would hit home. They left bad bruises upon 
his colleague in the cabinet. Among other papers 
of the time, though not a newspaper article, was an 
official letter to the President, in which Hamilton 
defended his principles and his measures. Early 
in 1792 the President, longing to escape the toils 
of public life and to spend the rest of his days in 
tranquillity, had consulted Madison and his two 
secretaries, Jefferson and Hamilton, upon the pro- 
priety of his declining a reelection. He soon 
changed his mind, influenced, perhaps, as much by 
the dissensions, so evident in the expostulations of 
his friends, as by the expostulations themselves. 
He deprecated this open feud between his secre- 
taries as a public misfortune, and sought, if he 
could not reconcile them, to silence it. That the 
Federalists were monarchists, as Jefferson and 
Madison never ceased asserting, he knew was not 
true, without the emphatic and indignant declara- 
tions of Hamilton, Adams, and other leading men 
of that party, when they condescended to notice a 
charge which they deemed so absurd that it was 
difficult to believe that anybody could make it in 
earnest. But, while he knew there was no real 



FRENCH POLITICS 187 

danger from that quarter, he coixld not fail to see 
that the reverence and love in which he was held 
constituted a bond of unity, so long as he remained 
chief magistrate; and he may have felt that, should 
he retire, there was no other common tie strong 
enough at that moment to hold together a Union, 
the possible dissolution of which was, both at the 
North and at the South, considered with calmness, 
sometimes with complacency, and, when party 
passion was at a red heat, even as a thing to be 
prayed for. At any rate, the President consented 
to take the advice of the coimselors whom he had 
consulted ; but in asking that advice he unwit- 
tingly aggravated the quarrel among them which 
caused him so much uneasiness. 

Jefferson, in the argimients he set forth both in 
conversation and by letter to influence Washing- 
ton's decision, dwelt upon the unhappy condition 
of public affairs. It was a storm which he him- 
self meant to get out of by retiring to Monticello, 
though he thought it was Washington's duty to 
remain at the helm and keep an eye to windward. 
This unhappy condition of affairs, he said, had 
all come from the course pursued by the secretary 
of the treasury, and was the natm-al consequence of 
the acts of Congress in relation to the public debt, 
the Bank, excise, currency, and other important 
measures passed in accordance with the secre- 
tary's policy. Whether this policy was meant to 
destroy the Union, subvert the republic, and es- 
tablish a monarchy upon its ruins, at any rate 



188 JAMES MADISON 

such must be the inevitable result of those mis- 
chievous measures. He urged this view of the 
subject with such pertinacity that Washington, 
either because he was impressed by so much ear- 
nestness, or because he was curious to know how 
the assertions could best be answered, sent them 
to Hamilton, with other objections of /a similar 
character from other persons, and sfeked for a 
reply. No names were given, but it is not likely 
that Hamilton was at any loss in guessing where 
such strictures upon his administration of affairs 
came from. " I have not fortitude enough," he 
said in his answer, " always to hear with calmness 
calumnies which necessarily include me as a princi- 
pal object in the measures censured, of the false- 
hood of which I have the most unqualified con- 
sciousness. ... I acknowledge that I cannot be 
entirely patient under charges which impeach the 
integrity of my public motives or conduct. I feel 
that I merit them in no degree, and expressions of 
indignation sometimes escape me in spite of every 
effort to suppress them." There were only two 
men in the country whom he could have had in 
mind when he wrote such words as these. In all 
Washington's career there is nowhere a stronger 
proof of his strong will, self-reliance, and passion- 
less impartiality than that he could stand between 
two such furnaces as Hamilton on one side and 
Jefferson and Madison on the other, both glowing 
at the intensest white heat, while he remained 
usually as calm and as unmoved as if breathing 



FRENCH POLITICS 189 

the softest, balmiest, and gentlest airs of a day in 
June. But all this personal controversy in the 
public prints, and in the official intercourse of the 
cabinet, left on both sides an intense exasperation, 
which could not fail to have a controlling influence 
in the conduct of political parties. Whether Jef- 
ferson was conscious or not — and whatever his 
feeling was, ^ladison shared it with him — that in 
this paper warfare he was signally defeated, the 
attempt to ruin Hamilton by an attack upon him 
in Congress followed, if it was not the consequence 
of, the mortification of defeat. 

In February, 1793, Mr. Giles, a representative 
from Virginia, offered a series of resolutions call- 
ing upon the President for certain information 
relating to the finances. They were a bold attack 
upon the secretary of the treasury, and, shoidd it 
prove that they could not be satisfactorily answered, 
woidd convict him of mismanagement of the finan- 
cial affairs of the government, of a disregard of 
law, of usurpation of power, and even of embezzle- 
ment of the public funds. Any reasonable groimd 
for believing such charges to be well-founded would 
be quite sufficient to bring the secretary to trial 
by impeachment. There was probably little doubt 
at the moment as to whence this blow came ; for 
though the hand might seem the hand of Plsau, the 
voice was the voice of Jacob. Behind Giles was 
Madison ; and behind Madison, of course, was Jef- 
ferson. Mr. John C. Hamilton, in his " History 
of the Kepublic," asserts that the resolutions were 



190 JAMES MADISON 

still — when he wrote, twenty-five years ago — in 
the archives of the State Department at Washing- 
ton, in Madison's handwriting ; and he further de- 
clares that Giles assured Ruf us King that Madison 
was their author. 

Hamilton's reply, so far as any intentional 
wrong-doing was imputed to him, was conclusive. 
There had been technical violations of acts of Con- 
gress in one instance, but it was only to carry out 
the acts themselves. Congress had, three years 
before, passed two acts authorizing the negotiation 
of two loans, one for twelve million dollars for the 
discharge of the foreign debt, and another for two 
million dollars to be used at home. It had been 
convenient, and had conduced to the success of the 
negotiation, to offer in Holland to contract a loan 
for fourteen million dollars, without the unneces- 
sary, and to foreigners probably the confusing, 
statement that the authority for borrowing that 
amount was derived from two separate acts of Con- 
gress. It was only in this borrowing of the money 
that there was any seeming disregard of the letter 
of the law. The loans and their purposes were 
kept entirely distinct in the accounts of the depart- 
ment. Other questions touching the management 
of these loans were so clearly and frankly explained 
that nothing but the captiousness of party could 
refuse to be satisfied. On one point — the charge 
of an alleged deficit — the opposition was abso- 
lutely silenced. The secretary indignantly ex- 
plained that the sum — as anybody could have 



FRENCH POLITICS 191 

known for the asking from any officer in the 
Treasury Department — which was made to ap- 
pear as missing was in credits for customs bonds 
not yet due, and bills of exchange on Europe sold 
but not yet paid for. 

Though there was enough of decency, or of pru- 
dence which took the place of decency, to drop the 
insinuation that the secretary had stolen what had 
never been in his possession, it was not so with 
the rest of the accusations. Only four days before 
Congress was to adjourn, Giles offered another set 
of resolutions. These assumed that the defiance 
of law and unwarranted assumption of power, 
which, at first, were only suggested by the in- 
quiries, were now proved to be true by the ex- 
planations that had been given. The indictment, 
therefore, was made to include the verdict and 
the sentence; the criminal was accused, was to 
be found guilty, and condemned to capital pun- 
ishment in one proceeding, without the privilege 
of trial, or a recognition of the right to be heard. 
The argument of the resolutions was, that certain 
acts were a violation of law; that the secretary 
had committed all those acts ; and therefore it 
was the will of the House that the facts be re- 
ported to the President. The presumption obvi- 
ously was, that the President would immediately 
dismiss from office a disgraced and faithless public 
servant. But the prosecution was an utter failure. 
The largest vote received for any of the resolu- 
tions was only fifteen ; that on the others was 



192 JAMES MADISON 

from seven to twelve, in a quorum of from fifty 
to sixty members. In the course of the debate 
Mr. Madison had said that " his colleague [Giles] 
had rendered a service highly valuable to the legis- 
lature, and no less important and acceptable to the 
public." The House showed by its votes how very 
far it was from agreeing with him. But Fisher 
Ames wrote about that time: "Madison is be- 
come a desperate party leader, and I am not sure 
of his stopping at any ordinary point of extrem- 
ity." If it be reaUy true that he instigated this 
attack upon Hamilton, and was the author of the 
resolutions, using Giles as his tool to get them 
before the House, Ames's reflection was not un- 
charitable. 

It would not be just, however, to leave the im- 
pression that the hostility shown in this affair was 
purely personal. Both Jefferson and Madison had 
a hearty hatred for Hamilton which would have 
been greatly gratified could they have made it 
the plain duty of the President to put him out of 
the Treasury Department a dishonored and ruined 
man. But this particular outbreak of their en- 
mity was intensified by their sincere and earnest 
enthusiasm for France. They were quite willing 
to bring Hamilton to grief at any time because 
he was Hamilton ; they were more than ordina- 
rily exasperated against him just now because in 
recent newspaper and other controversies he had 
altogether got the better of them ; but in this 
particular instance they wanted to punish him 



FRENCH POLITICS 193 

because of delay of payments in discharge of 
the indebtedness of the United States to France. 
This vfSLS the essential delinquency at which the 
Giles resolutions were pointed. The difficulty was, 
not that the secretaiy of the treasury was not 
carefid enough of the public money, but that he 
was too careful. He insisted upon being quite 
certain, when paying off a public debt, that he 
was paying it to the right persons, and that no 
risk shoidd be incurred of its being demanded a 
second time. He felt there was no such certainty 
about payments to France. The king was de- 
thi'oned ; but it was not wise, the secretary thought, 
to be hasty in recognizing revolutionary govern- 
ments. It was a republic to-day ; it might be a 
regency to-morrow ; a monarchy again the third 
day. It was more prudent to await a reasonable 
period for the evidence of permanency on one side 
or the other. Those old enough to remember the 
late war of the rebellion know how important 
the maintenance of this doctrine was in rejjard to 
the recognition of the rebel confederacy by Eng- 
land and France. 

But to aU this Jefferson did not in the least 
agree; neither did Madison. They were in full, 
even passionate, sympathy with the men who 
brought Louis XVI. to the guillotine. Money, 
they knew, was needed, and it was a crime against 
liberty to delay payment when payment was due 
to the French government. With Hamilton the 
question was, not whether the revolutionists ought 



194 JAMES MADISON 

to be, but whether they were, France. With Jef- 
ferson and Madison they were France, because 
they ought to be. Hesitation to acknowledge that 
the Revolution was the nation, they thought, could 
only come from an "Anglican party," the "ene- 
mies of France and of Liberty," who would lead 
the American people " into the arms and ulti- 
mately into the government of Great Britain," — 
to use the terms in which Madison spoke, a little 
later, of the Federalists. Which of these men, 
in this regard at least, were the thoughtful and 
prudent statesmen, and which were doctrinaires^ 
nobody now, probably, questions. The larger pro- 
portion of the people, however, were then carried 
away by the enthusiasm for the French revolu- 
tionists. It was so, no doubt, at first without 
much distinction of party ; but it was inevitable, 
when the government should be called upon to 
take some decisive stand in relation to European 
politics, that the country should divide into two 
hostile camps ; or, rather, that the two camps al- 
ready existing should become more hostile to each 
other than ever. It is not necessary to assume 
that the mass of the people gave themselves up to 
any very hard thinking about the matter. For 
the most part they followed, as the way is with 
parties, the political leaders to whom they were 
already accustomed, never doubting that not to do 
so would be treacherous to the gratitude America 
owed to France, and to the cause of liberty and 
democracy, which, in the hands of the Frenchmen, 



FRENCH POLITICS 195 

was hurling monarchs from their thrones — at least 
one monarch from his, and more, it was hoped, 
woidd follow. But when the revolution ran into 
the terrible excesses of a later stage, if any Fed- 
eralists had wavered in their allegiance to their 
chiefs they soon returned, persuaded that the wild 
and bloody anarchy of Paris was not the road that 
led to the establishment of a wise and safe popular 
government. 

There was no need now of pretexts for quarrel- 
ing ; real causes came fast enough. France de- 
clared war against England, and the United States 
had its part to play in this strife of giants. Its 
real interest was to keep out of trouble ; and, if aU 
were agreed on that point, it does not seem that 
there should have been much difficulty in saying 
so. " It behooves the government of this coun- 
try," wrote Washington to Hamilton, " to use 
every means in its power to prevent the citizens 
thereof from embroiling us with either of those 
powers, by endeavoring to maintain a strict neu- 
trality." It is difficult to conceive of a man being 
sincerely desirous of helping neither one side nor 
the other ; of injuring neither one side nor the 
other ; of maintaining, so far as help or harm 
could go, an attitude of absolute impartiality 
towards both, — it is difficult to conceive of such 
a man quarreling with the word " neutrality " as 
applied to his position. But Jefferson, neverthe- 
less, quarreled ^\^th it ; not frankly and directly 
as a thing he did not want, but captiously and 



196 JAMES MADISON 

hypercritically objecting to the word to cover his 
dislike to the thing itself. "A declaration of 
neutrality," he said, " was a declaration that there 
should be no war, to which the Executive was not 
competent." 

It was true that the Executive was not compe- 
tent to declare that there should be no war ; it was 
not true that the use of the word "neutrality" 
could have any such application to the future as to 
prevent Congress, when it shoidd assemble, from 
declaring war should it see fit to do so. But 
meanwhile. Congress not being in session, and no 
exio-ency having arisen that made it desirable in 
the President's judgment to call an extra session, 
he, with the assent of the cabinet, — for Jefferson 
did not venture upon direct opposition, — issued a 
proclamation " to exhort and warn the citizens of 
the United States carefully to avoid all acts and 
proceedings whatsoever " that might interfere with 
" the duty and interest of the United States " to 
" adopt and pursue a conduct friendly and impar- 
tial towards the belligerent powers." The objec- 
tionable word was left out in deference to Mr. 
Jefferson, who, really preferring that there should 
be no proclamation at all, hoped to take the sting- 
out of it by the omission of a phrase. It was the 
thing said, not the way of saying it, that the Pre- 
sident insisted upon, as it was his duty to preserve 
the peace till the legislature should declare for 
war, and his inclination to preserve it altogether. 
It can hardly be doubted that Jefferson and his 



FRENCH POLITICS 197 

friends saw as plainly as the other party saw how 
perilous to the interests of the United States a 
foreign war would probably be. But, while pro- 
fessing a desire to avoid it, they were far more 
anxious, apparently, to give aid, moral as well as 
material, to France, with whose revolutionary 
struggles they sympathized so deeply, than they 
were to avoid offense to England, whom they 
hated and would gladly see crippled. Not to be an 
enemy of England they held was to be an enemy 
of France ; and not of France merely, but of the 
"rights of man." They could not or would not 
comprehend any wisdom in moderation, any pru- 
dence in delay. It is curious to see how party 
animosity blinded even the best of them. The 
objection to the word "neutrality" was a mere 
quibble ; for the proclamation called upon all good 
citizens to maintain at their peril that state which, 
in all dictionaries, neutrality is defined to be. Mr. 
Jefferson, in instructing as secretary of state the 
American ministers abroad as to the attitude as- 
sumed by the government, could find no better 
term than " a fair neutrality." The fact was, the 
Republican leaders wished to avoid taking any 
positive stand, partly because delay might be a 
help to France, and partly in obedience to the law 
of partj^ politics, in opposition to the other side. 
They were not at first quite sure of their ground, 
and wanted to gain time. Mr. Madison seems to 
have waited about six weeks before he could ven- 
ture upon a positive opinion as to the proclamation. 



198 JAIVIES MADISON 

The newspapers helped him to a knowledge of 
party opinion, and party opinion helped him to 
make up his own. " Every ' Gazette ' I see," — 
he wrote in June, about eight weeks after the 
proclamation was published, — " every ' Gazette ' 
I see (except that of the United States [Federal- 
ist]) exhibits a spirit of criticism on the Anglified 
complexion charged on the Executive politics. . . . 
The proclamation was, in truth, a most unfortunate 
error." A week before, he had been seemingly 
cautious even in writing to Jefferson. Then he 
had observed that newspaper criticisms aroused 
attention, and he had heard expressions of sur- 
prise " that the President should have declared 
the United States to be neutral in the unqualified 
terms used, when we were so notoriously and un- 
equivocally under eventual engagements to defend 
the American possessions of France. I have heard 
it remarked, also, that the impartiality enjoined 
on the people was as little reconcilable with their 
moral obligations as the unconditional neutrality 
proclaimed by the government is with the express 
articles of the treaty." He adds : " I have been 
mortified that on these points I could offer no 
bona fide explanations that might be satisfactory." 
He was not in doubt long, however. Mr. Jeffer- 
son sent him within two or three weeks a series 
of papers by Hamilton, under the signature of 
" Pacificus," in defense of the proclamation, and 
urged him to reply. This Madison undertook to 
do at once, and in five papers, under the signature 



FRENCH POLITICS 199 

of " Helvidius," he took up all the points in dis- 
pute. 

The question relating to treaty obligations was 
the more serious. By the treaty of 1778 the 
United States had guaranteed " to his Most Chris- 
tian Majesty the present possessions of the Crown 
of France in America." An attempt on the part 
of Great Britain to take any of the French West 
India Islands would involve the United States in 
the war. How, then, Mr. Madison's friends might 
well ask, as in the letter just quoted he said 
they did, coidd " the President declare the United 
States to be neutral in the unqualified terms used, 
when we were so notoriously and unequivocally 
under eventual engagements to defend the Ameri- 
can possessions of France " ? Hamilton's ground 
was that the treaty, by its terms, was "a defen- 
sive alliance," and therefore not binding in this 
case, inasmuch as the present war against England 
was offensive ; and that, besides, the treaty was 
in suspension, as France herself was, in a sense, in 
suspension, having only a provisional government, 
the permanent and legitimate successor to which 
was uncertain. But an important point was 
gained, it was thought, in the decision to receive 
Genet as the French minister. Hamilton, still 
acting in accordance with that cautious policy 
which he thought to be, in such a crisis, the most 
judicious, questioned whether a minister from the 
provisional government in Paris should be recog- 
nized without reservations. Such an ambassador 



200 JAMES MADISON 

might be followed presently by another accredited 
by a new power in the revolutionary progress. 
This would, at the least, be an awkward dilemma 
not to be recovered from without the loss of some 
dignity by the government of the United States. 
But this point also was yielded in deference to 
Jefferson, and much to his mortification the con- 
cession turned out to be before he was many weeks 
older. 

"I anxiously wish," Madison wrote to Jeffer- 
son, "that the reception of Genet may testify 
what I believe to be the real affections of the peo- 
ple." He was amply gratified. From Charles- 
ton, where he landed, to Philadelphia, Genet was 
received with the warmest enthusiasm by all who 
sympathized with France, and by that larger num- 
ber among Americans who are always ready to 
hurrah for anything or anybody that has caught 
the popular fancy. Madison watched his progress 
with great interest, and apparently with some 
misgivings. Writing again a few days later to 
Jefferson, he says that " the fiscal party in Alex- 
andria was an overmatch for those who wished 
to testify the American sentiment." Indeed, he 
thinks it certain, he says in the same letter, " that 
Genet will be misled if he takes either the fashion- 
able cant of the cities or the cold caution of the 
government for the sense of the public," — falling 
himself, before he reaches the end of the sentence, 
into the cant of assuming neutrality in the govern- 
ment to be only a " mask " behind which to hide 



FRENCH POLITICS 201 

its " secret Anglomany." But he was quite mis- 
taken in supposing that Genet was likely to be 
misled, or led at all, by anybody. He was almost 
capable, as General Knox said, of declaring the 
United States a department of France, and of levy- 
ing troops here to reduce the Americans to obedi- 
ence. The man's conduct, if it had not been 
so outrageous, would have been ludicrous in its 
assumption of power, its disregard of the laws of 
the country, and its defiance of the government. 
Within three months of his arrival Jefferson him- 
self was constrained to acknowledge that he had 
developed " a character and conduct so unexpected 
and so extraordinary as to place us in the most 
distressing dilemma, between our regard for his 
nation, which is constant and sincere, and a regard 
for our laws, the authority of which must be main- 
tained ; for the peace of our coimtry, which the 
executive magistrate is charged to preserve; for its 
honor, offended in the person of that magistrate ; 
and for its character, grossly traduced in the con- 
versations and letters of this gentleman." Though 
this was in an official letter, it gave, no doubt, 
Jefferson's real opinion ; for no man had more 
reason than he for resenting the conduct of the 
irrepressible Frenchman. Jefferson has been ac- 
cused of too much familiarity with the French min- 
ister in private, and of tardiness in the discharge 
of his own duty as secretary where it was likely 
to clash with the other's schemes. Genet himself 
complained that he was thrown over by Jefferson 



202 JAMES MADISON 

after receiving from him every encouragement. 
This is, of course, true, but not in the least dis- 
creditable to Jefferson. When Genet arrived in 
Philadelphia, he was, although he had already 
committed some illegal acts in Charleston, profuse 
in his promises of good behavior. The secretary 
of state had welcomed him as the representative 
of France and the Revolution, and naturally he 
meant to make the most he could out of him, for 
the sake of the Republican party, as well as for the 
sake of the sacred cause of " liberty, equality, and 
fraternity." But he soon saw that he was dealing 
with one who was a cross between a mountebank 
and a madman, as we learn from a letter of Madi- 
son to Jefferson, written within two months of 
Jefferson's first interview with Genet. " Your 
account of Genet," says the letter, "is dreadful. 
He must be brought right if possible. His folly 
will otherwise do mischief which no vdsdom can 
repair." 

The mischief dreaded was that the administra- 
tion party would take advantage of the insolent 
and outrageous conduct of the French minister 
to show the folly of precipitancy, and to gain 
popularity and strength for itself. Madison soon 
writes to Jefferson to acquaint him with the reac- 
tion taking place in Virginia, " in the surprise and 
disgust of those who are attached to the French 
cause, and who viewed this minister as the instru- 
ment for cementing, instead of alienating, the two 
republics." He asserts that " the Anglican party 



FRENCH POLITICS 203 

is busy, as you may suppose, in making the worst 
of everything, and in turning the public feelings 
against France and thence in favor of England." 
In a sense this must have been true. The " fiscals," 
the " Anglomanys," the "Anglican party," the 
" monarchists," — which were Mr. Madison's pet 
names for his old friends, — were good enough 
politicians to take great satisfaction in keeping 
well stirred and in lively use the muddy waters 
into which their opponents had floundered. They 
were not, probably, careful always to remember 
that France was neither the better nor worse, nei- 
ther the wiser nor the less wise, because one of 
the mad fanatics, bred of the Revolution, had 
found his way, unfortunately, to the United States 
as a minister plenipotentiary. But, on the other 
hand, it was not true that there was any " Angli- 
can party," in the sense in which Madison used 
the term, — a party led by men who were " the 
enemies of France and of liberty, at work to lead 
the well-meanins: from their honorable connection 
with those [the French people] into the arms and 
ultimately into the government of Great Britain." 
Washington said that he did not believe there 
were ten men in the United States, whose opinions 
deserved any respect, who would change the form 
of government to a monarchy. But if there were 
only ten men in the country whose opinions, in the 
estimate of Jefferson and Madison, were not worth 
much, Washington was among them. The affec- 
tion and reverence, with which he was regarded by 



204 JAMES MADISON 

the people, they would have been glad to appeal 
to on behalf of their own party ; but it is easy to 
read between the lines in Jefferson's "Ana," and 
in his and Madison's correspondence, that they 
looked upon the President as the dupe of his secre- 
tary of the treasury. Not that they were ever 
wanting in terms of respect and even of venera- 
tion for the President, but the tone was often one 
of pitiful regret almost akin to contempt. 

" I am extremely afraid," Madison wrote to 
Jefferson, "that the President may not be suffi- 
ciently aware of the snares that may be laid for 
his good intentions by men whose politics at bot- 
tom are very different from his own." Again he 
says, a few days later : "I regret extremely the 
position into which the President has been thrown. 
The unpopular cause of Anglomany is openly lay- 
ing claim to him. His enemies, masking them- 
selves under the popular cause of France, are play- 
ing off the most tremendous batteries on him. . . . 
It is mortifying to the real friends of the Presi- 
dent that his fame and his influence should have 
anything to apprehend from the success of liberty 
in another country, since he owes his preeminence 
to the success of it in his own. If France tri- 
umphs, the ill-fated proclamation ^vill be a mill- 
stone, which would sink any other character and 
will force a struggle even on his." Yet it is cer- 
tain that Washington was not in the least doubt as 
to his own political principles ; that he was never 
in danger of being inveigled into the betrayal of 



FRENCH POLITICS 205 

those principles, whatever they might be ; and that 
he was quite capable of clue care for his own repu- 
tation. 

If Madison did not know that these tears over 
Washington, if sincere, were quite luicalled for, 
Jefferson was not in the least deceived. He 
records in his " Ana " that the President, referring 
to certain articles that had recently appeared in 
Freneau's " Gazette," said that " he considered 
those papers as attacking him [AVashington] di- 
rectly : for he must be a fool indeed to swallow 
the little sugar-plums here and there thrown out 
to him ; that in condemning the administration 
of the government they condemned him, for if they 
thought there were measures pursued contrary to 
his sentiments, they must conceive him too care- 
less to attend to them, or too stupid to understand 
them." Again, some months later, the President, 
alluding to another article in Freneau's paper, — 
that " rascal Freneau," as he called him, — said 
" that he despised all their attacks on him person- 
ally, but there never had been an act of the govern- 
ment — not meaning in the executive line only, 
but in any line — which that paper had not abused. 
He was evidently sore and warm," continues the 
candid secretary, "and I took his intention to be, 
that I should interpose in some way with Freneau, 
perhaps withdraw his appointment of translating 
clerk in my office. But I will not do it." 

These frank and indignant avowals of feeling 
and opinion were not, if we may believe Jefferson, 



206 



JAMES MADISON 



unusual with Washington, even in cabinet meet- 
ings ; and it seems hardly likely that Madison, 
who was on the most friendly and intimate terms 
with the President, could have been so ignorant of 
how he felt and thought as to suppose him the 
mere dupe of designing men. The truth is, proba- 
bly, that Madison did not, any more than Jeffer- 
son, believe this. It was only a bit of party tactics 
to assume, lest the President should have too much 
influence over the minds of the people, that, in the 
hands of the wicked " Anglicists," he was as clay 
in the hands of the potter. The two friends, 
whether in writing or by speech they lamented 
and excused the unhappy position, as they were 
pleased to call it, of the President, must have 
appeared to each other like the Roman augurs in 
Gerome's picture. 



CHAPTER XIV 

mS LATEST TEAES IN CONGRESS 

Genet was at last got rid of, but tlie evil that 
lie did lived after him. His presence had provoked 
an outbreak, to some degree, of the phenomena of 
the French Revolution, which, however significant 
they might be in the upheaval of an old monarchi- 
cal despotism, were an unwholesome growth among 
a simple people, where one man was as good as 
another before the law ; where, from the fii-st set- 
tlement of the country, all had largely possessed 
the advantages of a popular government ; and 
where any other than a republican government 
for the future was wellnigh impossible. For men 
to address each other as " citizen," as if the word 
had the new significance in America that it had 
just gained in France ; to swear eternal fidelity to 
liberty, equality, and fraternity, as if these were 
lately discovered rights which had been denied the 
common people for centuries by kings and nobles, 
who had always lived in the next street in incon- 
ceivable luxuiy wrung from the blood and sweat 
of the poor ; to form Jacobin clubs pledged to the 
suppression of the tyranny of aristocrats in a coun- 
try where, as Samuel Dexter said of New England, 



208 JAMES MADISON 

there was hardly a man rich enough to own a car- 
riage, and few so poor as not to own a horse ; for 
men thus to ape those revolutionary ways, which 
meant so much in Paris, may have seemed at the 
moment, to sober-minded people, more fantastic 
than harmful. It was harmful, however, insomuch 
as it substituted sentiment for common sense, and 
made enthusiasm, not reason, the guide of conduct. 
A character was given to political conflict which 
obtained for years to come. There was, it is true, 
a certain manliness about it in remarkable contrast 
with that maudlin sentimentality of our time which 
is rather inclined to ask pardon of the rebels of the 
late civil war for having put them to the trouble 
of getting up a rebellion. It was a conflict, never- 
theless, more of party passion than of principle, 
wherein it is impossible to see that either party 
was absolutely right, or either absolutely wrong. 
The Francomania phase of it disappeared for a 
time in John Adams's administration ; but it 
revived again, and gave intensity and virulence to 
the political struggles, in the first decade of this 
century. Then it was that men went about their 
daily affairs with cockades on their hats as dis- 
tinctive party badges. In their social as well as 
in their business relations they were governed by 
party affinities. Neighbors differing in politics 
would hardly speak to each other, and each was 
always ready to accept the other's political crooked- 
ness as the measure of his possible depravity in 
everything else. They would hardly walk on the 



HIS LATEST YEARS IN CONGRESS 209 

same side of the street ; or sail in the same packet ; 
or ride in the same stage-coach ; or buy their gro- 
ceries at the same shop ; or listen to the preaching 
of the gospel from the same pidpit ; indeed, if the 
preacher was known to have pronounced political 
opinions, he was held, by those who did not agree 
with him, as one from whose shoulders the clerical 
gown should be torn. 

Gratitude to France had not yet even become 
traditional, and it was intensified by the deepest 
sjmipathy for a people struggling for what, by their 
aid, Americans had so recently gained. Added to 
this was the old hatred to England, which England 
as carefully nursed as if it were her settled policy, 
by exciting Indian hostilities on the borders, by 
outrages on the high seas, and by an interference 
with American commerce, exercised with as little 
consideration of the rights of an independent nation 
as if the States were still colonies in revolt. Never 
did a party find, ready made and close at hand, 
so many elements of popularity ; and these being 
appealed to as Genet appealed to them, it was easy 
to set the country in a blaze. When the adminis- 
tration was determined that he should be recalled, 
and the Republican leaders were anxious to get rid 
of him, as they could not restrain him, Jefferson 
opposed, in a meeting of the cabinet, the proposition 
to ask for his recall, lest such popular indignation 
should be aroused as would enable the French 
minister to defy the government itself. The seed 
sowed by such a man, on such a soil, bore fruit a 



210 JAMES MADISON 

thousand fold for almost a generation. It Is not to 
be wondered at that the Federalists could not long 
hold their own against a party that did not ask the 
people to think, but bade them only to remember 
— much, Indeed, that ought to be remembered — 
and to feel. That is always so much easier to do 
than the other, and it is always so much easier to 
appeal effectually to sentiment than to reflection, 
that the wonder rather is that the Federalists could 
hold their own so long as they did. All things 
were against them but one. Washington, though 
altogether above any partisan bias, as he believed 
to be the imperative duty of the chief magistrate 
of the nation, conducted his administration by the 
principles which distinguished the Federalists. He 
was neither, as he intimated to Jefferson, so care- 
less as not to know what was done, nor such a 
fool as not to understand why it was done ; and so 
greatly was he revered for his exalted character, 
so universal was the confidence In his integrity, 
sagacity, and sound judgment, that, so long as he 
remained President, the party that surrounded him 
was immovable as a mountain. His policy was to 
stave off a rupture with England, and, if possible, 
to bring that power into pacific and rational rela- 
tions with the United States. The government 
aimed to keep itself clear of entanglement with all 
foreign politics ; to maintain that perfect neutrality 
which should violate no treaties, offend no national 
friendships, provoke no jealousies, and leave Eng- 
land and France to fight their own battles, content 



HIS LATEST YEARS IN CONGRESS 211 

that the United States should be an impartial spec- 
tator. Thirty years afterward, when the Federal 
party had ceased to exist under that title, this was 
announced as the true American policy, and was 
thenceforth known as "The Monroe Doctrine," 
though the merit, even of re-discovery, did not 
belong; to President Monroe. 

In nine cases out of ten, perhaps in ninety-nine 
out of a hundred, the wisest statesmanship is the 
knowledge when and how to compromise. Cer- 
tainly that was all John Jay, whom the President 
sent to England to make a treaty, could do. The 
treaty was a bad one ; that is, it was not such an 
one as any President and Senate would have dared 
to consent to for the last sixty years ; it was not 
so good an one as that which Monroe and Pinkney 
negotiated ten years later, and which President 
Jefferson, lest it should help England and hurt 
France, then qmetly locked up in his desk without 
permitting the Senate even to know of its exist- 
ence; nor was it so bad as the treaty of peace 
made with England in 1814. But it was undoubt- 
edly the best that could be done at the time. The 
question was between it and nothing ; and the best 
its warmest defenders could say was that it was 
better than nothing. No treaty meant war; and 
war at that moment with England meant ruin. 
At least so the Federalists thought, and, so far 
as human foresight could go, they were probably 
right. 

But never was a treaty more unpopular than 



212 JAMES MADISON 

this, when Its provisions came to be understood. 
The government, in delaying to make it public, 
seemed to fear for its reception, and by that hesi- 
tation helped to raise the very doubts it was afraid 
of. But when it was published the whole South 
was aroused as one man on finding that the pay- 
ment for fugitive slaves, who during the war of 
the Revolution had sought refuge with the British 
army, was not provided for. Other concessions 
made to England were, in other parts of the coun- 
try, deemed not less humiliating and injurious to 
the national honor than this refusal to pay for 
runaway negroes. Also, there was a one-sided 
stipulation relating to commerce in the West In- 
dies, so injurious to American interests that the 
President and Senate, rather than ratify it, de- 
termined to reject the whole treaty and take the 
consequences. There was hardly a town of any 
note that did not hold its indignation meeting. 
Jay was burned in effigy, or the attempt was made 
so to express the public disapprobation. In more 
than one of the larger towns. Hamilton, when at 
a public meeting In New York he tried to explain 
and defend the treaty, was stoned and compelled 
to retire. If the more violent opponents of the 
administration were to be believed, its members, 
from the President down, and all the leading men 
of the party supporting it, were bought by "British 
gold," or were ready without being bought, but 
from pure original depravity, to betray their own 
country and help to destroy France. The name of 



HIS LATEST YEARS IN CONGRESS 213 

the ingenious inventor of the argument of " British 
gold," then used for the first time, has unfortu- 
nately been lost; but it has stood the test of a 
hundred years' usage, and is as startling and con- 
clusive to-day as it was a century ago. 

There soon came, however, the sober second 
thought which took into consideration the cir- 
cumstances under which tho treaty was made, the 
possible and even probable consequences of its 
rejection, as well as the objections to the treaty 
itself. After the first excitement had passed away, 
many thought it worth while to read for them- 
selves what hitherto they had only reviled at the 
suggestion of others, or from sympathy with 
the popular clamor. The commercial community, 
the New York Chamber of Commerce leading the 
way, came to the conclusion that their rights and 
interests were reasonably protected ; that to be re- 
cognized as a neutral between two such belligerent 
powers as England and France was a great point 
gained ; that partial indemnity was better than 
total loss ; and that the chance of a fairly profita- 
ble trade in the future was preferable to the ruin 
of all foreign commerce. It was universally agreed 
that peace was better than war ; but there was 
this difference between the two parties : while one 
maintained that war was not a necessary conse- 
quence of the rejection of the treaty, the other 
declared it must be inevitable, where there were 
so many points of collision which could only be 
escaped by mutual agreement. This was especially 



214 JAMES MADISON 

true on the frontier, where Indian hostilities were 
sure to follow, and lead to general war, if the 
military posts, which should have been given up at 
the close of the Eevolution, should remain longer 
in the hands of the English. 

But, after all, the real question with the Kepub- 
licans was the influence which a treaty with Eng- 
land might have upon the relations of France and 
the United States. They detested England for 
her own sake ; they detested her still more for the 
sake of France. If there had been no question of 
France in the way they would, perhaps, have been 
willing, like the Federalists, to consider the rela- 
tions of England and the United States on their 
merits, — to remember that the commerce between 
them was greater than that which the United 
States had with any other country, the loss of 
which might be a disastrous check to her prosper- 
ity; that the peoples of the two countries were, 
after all, of one blood, and that theirs was a com- 
mon heritage in the institutions, laws, language, 
and character that distinguished the race ; that the 
quarrel between them was — though it might be 
the more bitter on that account — a family quarrel, 
and ought for that reason to be the more speedily 
settled. But, if England would not remember 
these things, — as she never has to this day, — if, 
on the contrary, she chose to be overbearing, con- 
temptuous, insolent, quite regardless of American 
rights, — as she always has been when she could be 
so safely, — then it behooved the United States, 



HIS LATEST TEARS IN CONGRESS 215 

inasmuch as she was a young and as yet a feeble 
nation, to conciliate this powerful enemy whenever 
she could do so consistently with her self-respect, 
to avoid giving unnecessary offense or provoking 
fresh injuries, and, in the mean while, to nurture 
and husband her strength, to keep an accurate 
account of all the wrongs that in her weakness she 
shoidd be compelled to submit to, and to bide her 
time. These were the principles of the Federalists. 
Their aim was, not the good of England, but the 
good of the United States. They were an Ameri- 
can party ; to them foreign relations were of im- 
portance mainly for the influence these might have 
upon the prosperity, happiness, and power of their 
own country. They did not forget the gratitude 
due to France for the aid she had given to the 
struggling colonies, though that aid was given not 
so much for love of America as for hatred of Eng- 
land. The pacific and friendly relations already 
established with France they held in due estima- 
tion ; and their sympathies went out to her people 
in full measure in their struggle for a popular 
government, so long as that struggle was kept 
within the bounds of reason and humanity. But 
sympathy with and gratitude to France did not 
blind them to the wisdom and expediency of pacific 
and friendly relations with England, provided such 
could be established without the sacrifice of their 
own prosperity, independence, and national pride. 
It was only to add to that prosperity, to gain new 
security for that independence, and to build up a 



216 JAMES MADISON 

nation of which they and their children, to the 
latest generation, might well be proud, that they 
ought to be on good terms with that powerful state 
with whom they were co-heirs in all the ideas and 
institutions constituting the civilization that made 
her great. They hoped to build up, west of the 
Atlantic Ocean, " an Inglishe Nation" in its broad- 
est sense, of which Walter Raleigh had hoped that 
he might live to see the beginning, and which the 
latest historical writers in England are just now 
recognizing as the most important part of the 
modern empire of the English race. 

The House of Representatives was not in ses- 
sion when the Jay treaty was ratified by the 
President and Senate, but Mr. Madison's letters 
show that he could see in it nothing but evil. In 
February, 1796, the ratification by both govern- 
ments was announced to both houses of Congress, 
and measures were at once taken by the Repub- 
licans in the lower house to render the treaty, if 
possible, null and void. A resolution, warmly 
supported by Mr. Madison, was offered, calling 
upon the President for copies of the instructions 
under which Mr. Jay acted, with the correspond- 
ence and any other papers, proper to be made 
public, relating to the negotiation. The resolution 
was subjected to a debate of three weeks, but was 
finally passed. The request was refused by the 
President, on the ground that the treaty-making 
power was, by the Constitution, confided to the 
President and Senate. It was on this point mainly 



HIS LATEST YEARS IN CONGRESS 217 

that the debate had tiu-ned ; and the President, in 
support of his opinion as well as that of the Fed- 
eralists generally, referred to his recollection of 
the plain intention of the Constitutional Conven- 
tion, and to the fact that a proposition, " that no 
treaty should be binding on the United States 
which was not ratified by law," was " explicitly 
rejected." Mr. Madison said a day or two after, 
that, while he did not doubt "the case to be as 
stated, he had no recollection of it." Of the mes- 
sage itself, he said that it was " as unexpected as 
its tone and tenor are improper and indelicate." 
But Hamilton, he thought, wrote it, and the Pre- 
sident was, as usual, lamented over for having 
been taken in. A resolution, however, was finally 
passed in favor of the treaty, though by a majority 
of three only. The debate upon it was earnest 
and long, Mr. Madison leading the opposition. 
His disappointment was bitter. " The progress 
of this business throughout," he wrote to Jefferson, 
" has been to me the most worrying and vexatious 
that I ever encountered ; and the more so, as the 
causes lay in the unsteadiness, the follies, the per- 
verseness, and the defections among our friends, 
more than in the strength, or dexterity, or malice 
of our opponents." 

Though the Jay treaty was not — as was said 
on a previous page — such an one as the United 
States would have acceded to in latter times, the 
result proved it to be a wise and timely measure. 
Notwithstanding the disturbed condition of affairs 



218 JAMES MADISON 

in Europe, its influence upon tLe United States, 
and the increasing violence of faction here, the 
increase for the next ten or twelve years of the 
commerce, and the consequent growth and pro- 
sperity, of the country were greater than the most 
sanguine supporters of the treaty had dared to 
hope for. Their immediate expectations that it 
might be possible to establish better relations with 
England, without disturbing essentially those exist- 
ing with France, were, however, signally disap- 
pointed. Their opponents were wiser ; for they 
not only measured accurately the indignation of 
the French by their own, but they took good care 
that it should not languish for want of encourage- 
ment. The French Directory might have been 
reconciled to the situation had it been plain to 
them that there was neither an "Anglicized " party 
nor a French party in the United States, but that 
the people were united in the determination to 
maintain, for their own protection, whatever their 
personal sympathies might be, an absolute neu- 
trality between the belligerent powers. But as 
they were assured that their friends in America 
meant also to be their effectual allies, so they 
believed that those who professed neutrality used 
it only as a mask for friendship to England. 

James Monroe had been received in Paris as 
American minister, literally as well as morally, 
with open arms, in that memorable scene when, in 
the presence and amid the cheers of the National 
Convention, the president. Merlin de Douai, im- 



HIS LATEST YEARS IN CONGRESS 219 

printed upon his cheeks, in the name of France, 
the kiss of fraternity. Till he was recalled in the 
latter days of Washington's administration, Mon- 
roe was the representative not so much of the gov- 
ernment to which he owed allegiance as of the 
faction to which he belonged at home. He was 
not, it is true, unmindful of the hundreds of out- 
rages perpetrated by French naval vessels and pri- 
vateers upon American merchantmen ; that their 
crews were thrown into French prisons, and that 
the detention of their cargoes had brought ruin 
upon many American citizens ; nor did he neglect 
to demand redress. But he seemed absolutely 
incapable of understanding that if there were any- 
thing to choose between the insults and wrongs 
which America was compelled to submit to from 
England and France, it was only in the greater 
ability of England to inflict them. English ships 
swept the ocean, and pretexts were never wanting 
for overhauling American vessels, stripping them 
of some of their men, or confiscating both ships and 
cargoes. France had as many pretexts, and quite 
as good a will to enforce them ; but she had fewer 
ships, and for that reason, and that only, did rather 
less damage. 

But however earnest Monroe was in insisting 
upon the rights of neutrals, in urging upon the 
French ministry the strict observance of treaty 
obligations, and in complaining of the constant 
injuries done in their despite, there was another 
thing about which he was far more earnest. He 



220 JAMES MADISON 

was as anxious to aid the French to baffle, if pos- 
sible, Jay's negotiations in London as if he were 
uncovering a plot against his own government. 
When the ratification of the treaty was made 
known in Paris, the indignation of the Directory 
was hardly kept within bounds. The minister of 
foreign affairs notified Monroe that the Directory 
considered the stipulations of the treaty of 1778 
as altered and suspended in their most essential 
parts by this treaty with England. Under any 
circumstances the French would, no doubt, have 
resented the establishment of friendly relations 
between the United States and the old enemy of 
France, with whom she at that moment was en- 
gaged in a war arousing more than the bitter in- 
herited enmity of the two peoples. But the course 
Monroe had seen fit to pursue had done much to 
assure the French that the strong party in the 
United States, which he represented, would never 
permit the virgin republic to be delivered, as it 
was assumed the treaty did deliver her, bound and 
gagged, into the hands of the power which Jeffer- 
son loved to call " the harlot England." The first 
enthusiasm of the Revolution was fast growing 
into cant in both countries, and the language of 
devotion to liberty, equality, and fraternity was 
beginning to lose all meaning. But it was easy to 
be deceived by the assurances, more significant in 
actions than in words, of an official representative, 
that the American people, save an Anglicized and 
decreasing minority, were the friends, and meant 



HIS LATEST YEARS IN CONGRESS 221 

to be the allies, of France. Of course the French 
were all the more exasperated because they bad 
permitted themselves to be deluded. Monroe was 
first rebuked by his own government for neglecting 
to do all that might have been done to reconcile 
the Directory to a treaty between the United States 
and Great Britain ; and soon after, his conduct 
continuing unsatisfactory, he was recalled. 

It is, of course, possible that the French Direc- 
tory were not misled ; that nothing would have 
reconciled them to the British treaty ; and that 
their subsequent course would have been the same 
had they believed the American people were desir- 
ous to be on good terms with England solely for 
their own tranquillity and interest, and not at all 
because any large portion of them were at enmity 
with France. This, however, would not be a valid 
excuse for Monroe's course as a representative of 
his government. The only defense for him is, 
that he was deceived by his friends at home ; they 
must share, therefore, the responsibility for his 
conduct, inasmuch as they encouraged a man not 
over strong in mind or character, and more likely 
to be governed by impulse than by good judg- 
ment, to abuse the confidence placed in him by the 
administration. 

From any share in this responsibility, however, 
Madison must be relieved. He was in very con- 
stant correspondence with Monroe, and kept him 
carefidly advised as to the progress of the treaty. 
No man desired its defeat more earnestly than he, 



222 JAMES MADISON 

and he believed that a majority o£ the people 
were opposed to it. But he evidently doubted its 
rejection from the first, and his discussion of pos- 
sibilities in his letters to Monroe was always frank 
and discriminating. In the end he accounted for 
the vote in its favor in the House of Representa- 
tives by the activity and influence of its friends, 
which its opponents wanted the ability or the time 
to overcome. It is probable that his colleagues of 
his own party in the House did not agree with him 
that public opinion was against the treaty, as it 
was by votes from their side that its acceptance 
was carried. 

With the ensuing session of Congress, at the 
close of Washington's administration, Madison's 
congressional service ended. The leadership of 
the opposition, whatever may be thought of its 
influence upon the welfare of the country, or of 
the personal motives by which he may have been 
governed, had devolved upon him, almost from the 
beginning, by natural selection of the fittest for 
that position. It was not an easy place to take, 
either by one's own choice or by the suffrages of 
others ; for at the head of the administration to be 
opposed stood the man most revered by a grateful 
country, surrounded by men among those, at least, 
who were best known for their past services and 
most esteemed for their ability and character. It 
was the more difficult for one whose personal rela- 
tion to the President was that of the warmest 
friendship ; to whom the President was accustomed 



HIS LATEST YEARS IN CONGRESS 223 

to turn for counsel and even for guidance; and 
who, being among those eminent men to whom the 
people owed their new Constitution, was counted 
upon to strengthen the union of the States and 
build up a strong and stable government. He 
played his difficult part, nevertheless, with dig- 
nity; if not brilliant, he was always ready with the 
best reasons that could be given for the measures 
he supported; and his zeal was invariably tempered 
with a wise moderation and a courtesy toward op- 
ponents which made him always respected, and 
sometimes feared for reserved force, in debate. 

Somewhat more than a year before his retire- 
ment from Congress Mr. Madison had married, 
and it is quite possible that this may in part have 
moved him to seek rest in the tranquillity of a 
country life. Tjadition says that Mrs. Madison 
was a beautiful woman. She has in our time been 
a marked figure in the society of Washington, and 
many remember her for her fine presence, her 
powers of conversation, and that beauty which 
sometimes belongs to the aged, though it may not 
have been preceded by youthful comeliness. Her 
maiden name was Dolly Payne, and her parents 
were members of the Society of Friends. When 
Madison married her she was Mrs. Todd, the 
widow of John Todd, a lawyer of Philadelphia. 
Her age at this time was twenty-six years, Mr. 
Madison being forty-three, and she survived him 
thirteen years, dying in 1849. On her tombstone 
she is called "Dolley;" but Mr. Kives, in his life 



224 



JAMES MADISON 



of her husband, ever mindful of the proprieties, 
calls her " Dorothea," or rather, Mrs. Dorothea 
Payne Madison ; for, like the Vicar of Wakefield, 
he loved to give the whole name. 



* 



i 



CHAPTER XV 

AT HOME — "RESOLUTIONS OF '98 AND '99" 

Mr. Madison, in retiring for a time from pub- 
lic office, did not lose his interest in public affairs. 
Of few Americans can it be said with more truth 
that he had a genius for politics, and the subject, 
wherever he might be, was never out of his mind. 
There is not much else in the volumes of his pub- 
lished letters, while there is just enough else to 
show that in these he said all he had to say about 
anything. His more ambitious writings, the pa- 
pers in " The Federalist," the essay on The British 
Doctrine of Neutral Trade, his controversial articles 
in the newspapers under various pseudonyms, are 
all political, all able, and all of great value as a 
part of the history of the times. Those which are 
controversial, however, must be taken, like his let- 
ters, as aids to knowledge rather than as definite 
conclusions to be accepted without question. It 
does not detract from the value of these letters, 
however, that they are written from the point of 
view of a party leader. Affairs of only temporary 
importance sometimes loom up before him merely 
because of their influence upon some immediate 
party movement ; and others, of far-reaching conse- 



226 JAMES MADISON 

quences, which have no such bearing, escape his 
notice altogether ; but the reader soon learns that 
he may, at any rate, confide in the sincerity of the 
writer, and accept as freely the reasons given for 
his course as they are frankly stated. 

Of the literary value of his writings, aside from 
their historical interest, there is not much to be 
said, though Mr. Madison always wrote, even in 
his letters, as if writing for posterity. He was 
not felicitous in the use of language ; the style is 
turgid, heavy with resounding words of many syl- 
lables, unillumined by any ray of imagination, any 
flash of wit or of humor ; and the sentences are 
often involved and badly put together. But there 
is a genuineness, an evident sincerity of purpose, 
in all he wrote, and occasionally an expression of 
deep feeling, which are always impressive. We 
search for glimpses of his private life and charac- 
ter in such letters, for they are not easily apparent. 
In one sense he had no private life, or, at least, 
none that was not so subordinate to his public 
career that there was little in it either significant 
or attractive. There is, in this respect, a marked 
contrast between his correspondence and that of 
Jefferson. There was, possibly, a little affectation 
in Jefferson's frequent assertions of his intense 
desire for the quiet of the country and the tran- 
quillity of home, and of his distaste for the tur- 
moils and anxieties of public office. But he was 
certainly fond of country life, with the leisure to 
potter about among his sheep and his trees; to 



AT HOME 227 

watch the growth of his wheat and his clover ; to 
contrive new coulters for his plows ; to talk of 
philosophy, of the Social Contract, of mechanics, 
and of natural history : if he was averse to public 
life, it was not because political power and distinc- 
tion were a burden to him, except as they brought 
with them strife and unpopidarity, which truly his 
soul loathed for himself, though he rather liked to 
set other people by the ears. Plis private life was 
unquestionably as full of interest to Idmself as it 
is entertaining to look upon in the unconscious 
revelation of his own letters. 

But with Madison it was apparently quite other- 
wise. He unbent with difficulty. Always solemn 
and dignified, it was rather painful than pleasant 
to him to stoop to the petty matters of e very-day 
existence. He had no small affectations, and was 
not forever asserting that he was without ambition; 
as if that, without which nobody is of much use in 
the world either to himself or to others, were a 
weakness akin to depravity. With brief intervals, 
covering only a few months altogether, he was 
where he best liked to be, from his entrance upon 
public Kfe in 1775 till he stepped down in 1817 
from that political elevation beyond which there 
are no ascending steps. During these forty-two 
years he found a certain enjoyment in a comitry 
home for a little while at a time, but it was chiefly 
tlie enjoyment of needed rest from official labor. 
The price of tobacco and the promise of the wheat 
crop interested him then, but only as they inter- 



228 JAMES MADISON 

ested him always as a source of his own income, 
and as the index to the general prosperity. At the 
end of a letter upon political matters, he announces 
with satisfaction that his merino ewe has dropped 
a lamb, and both mother and offspring are as well 
as could be expected ; but it was probably Mr. 
Jefferson's gratification rather than his own that 
he had in mind, for it was Mr. Jefferson who had 
imported the sheep. Again, in a similar letter, he 
takes a little remaining space to express a hope 
that Mr. Jefferson may permit the use of the rams 
of that flock to improve the breed of the native 
stock ; not, apparently, that he cared so much 
about wool as that he wished to show a courteous 
and friendly interest in one of Mr. Jefferson's 
many projects for the improvement of things gen- 
erally. 

It was probably during the year of comparative 
leisure after he left Congress that Mr. Madison 
built his house at Montpellier, though some ques- 
tion has been raised on this point. He certainly 
was building a house at that time, and it is not 
likely that he ever employed himself in that way 
more than once. Scattered among discussions of 
Alien and Sedition Laws, the war in Europe, free 
goods in neutral ships, and other public topics, 
are brief allusions to lathing nails which he de- 
pended upon Mr. Jefferson to supply ; that gentle- 
man having recently set up a machine for their 
manufacture, which, however, like a good many 
other of his contrivances, seems to have had a 



AT HOME 229 

hitch in it. So also he asks the Vice-President 
to see to it that, when the window-glass and the 
pulleys are forwarded, the "chord" for the latter 
shall not be forgotten ; and orders for other arti- 
cles, only to be found in Philadelphia, are sent 
to his obliging friend. Mr. Jefferson, it is easy 
to believe, found them rather the most interesting 
part of the political letters to which they were 
appended ; and he was quite willing, no doubt, 
to relieve the tedium of presiding over the Senate 
by searching through the Market Street shops for 
the latest improvements in builders' hardware. To 
Mr. Monroe, Madison wrote that, as he is sending 
off a wagon to fetch nails for his carpenters, " it 
will receive the few articles which you have been 
so good as to offer from the superfluities of your 
stock, and which circumstances will permit me now 
to lay in." Evidently he was getting ready to go 
to housekeeping with his young wife. Monroe's 
stock of household goods had been replenished, 
perhaps by importations from France on his re- 
cent return, and he was disposing of his old sup- 
plies, by gift or sale, among his neighbors. Madi- 
son, at any rate, sends this modest list of what 
he would like to have : " To wit, two table-cloths 
for a dining-room of about eighteen feet; two, 
three, or four, as may be convenient, for a more 
limited scale ; four dozen napkins, which will not 
in the least be objectionable for having been used ; 
and two mattresses." It was not an extravagant 
outfit, even though it had not been meant for 



230 JAMES MADISON 

one of those lordly Virginia homes of which some 
modern historians give us such charming pictures. 
" We are so little acquainted," — Mr. Madison 
continues in that stately way which nothing ever 
surprised him into forgetting, — " we are so little 
acquainted with the culinary utensils in detail that 
it is difficult to refer to such by name or descrip- 
tion as would be within our wants." 

But pots and kettles, — though that may not 
be the name they were known by in Virginia, — 
table-cloths and mattresses, however moderate in 
number, are sure indications that the house, which 
was to be his residence when he should be content 
to retire from public service, was finished early in 
1798. He had rested long enough, and was busy 
that year in attendance upon the state Assembly 
at Richmond, to which he consented the next year 
to be returned as a member. Perhaps it was be- 
cause he could not keep longer out of the fray. 
Perhaps he felt called to a special duty. Affairs, 
foreign and domestic, were in a critical condition. 
France, in her resentment at the Jay treaty, had 
committed so many fresh outrages upon American 
commerce ; had so exasperated the American peo- 
ple by these outrages ; and, by refusing to receive 
the ministers from the United States, had so in- 
sulted them and the government they represented 
in the proposed arrangements, — disclosed in the 
X. Y. Z. correspondence, — that all friendly rela- 
tions between the two countries had ceased, and it 
had seemed impossible that war could be avoided. 



"RESOLUTIONS OF '98 AND '99" 231 

For a while the popialar sympathy was entirely 
with Mr. Adams's administration, and the promise 
could hardly be fairer that the Federalists, if they 
managed wisely, might remain in power and be 
sustained by the whole country. But in some re- 
spects they were as unwise as in others they were 
unfortunate. President Adams, though possess- 
ing many great qualities, was of too irascible and 
jealous a temjier to be a successful leader or a 
good ruler. But there were other men of distinc- 
tion among the Federalists who were hardly less 
fond of having their own way than the President 
was of having his. The incompatibility of tem- 
per was not altogether on one side in that family 
quarrel. But all were equally responsible for 
such a blunder as the enactment of the Alien and 
Sedition Laws. The provocation, it is true, was 
unquestionably great. Refugees from abroad had 
crowded to the United States, many of whom were 
professional agitators, and some were very sorry 
vagabonds. Whatever reason they might have 
had for fomenting discontent with government 
in England or in France, there was nothing to 
justify any such violent measures in this country. 
But from their conduct as political partisans, 
particularly as newspaper editors, they soon came 
to be looked upon by the Federalists — for they 
all joined the other party — as a dangerous class. 
There grew up a feeling that it would be wiser 
for civil affairs to remain, in city, state, and na- 
tion, in the hands of those who were born and 



232 JAMES MADISON 

educated under republican institutions, and not 
to fall altogether under control of those who were 
alien in blood and religion, and who were in- 
clined to look upon politics, not in the light of 
the citizen's duty to the common weal, but as an 
easy and profitable calling where the least scrupu- 
lous scoundrel could gather the largest share of 
spoils. It may be that the authors of those laws 
were so determined to forestall the apprehended 
evils of such a dispensation because use had not 
accustomed them, as it has later generations of 
American citizens, to live under it in humility if 
not content. Or, perhaps, they wanted that pro- 
found faith of our time that the longer this sub- 
version of government is submitted to, the easier 
it will be to get back to the rule of the honest and 
wise. 

But, at any rate, whatever their reasons, they 
meant by these laws relating to aliens to put the 
acquirement of citizenship under more stringent 
regulations, and to check the growth and promul- 
gation of seditious doctrines. If it be true, as is 
sometimes maintained with some plausibility, that 
citizens, to be intrusted with self - government, 
should be endowed with a certain degree of intelli- 
gence and virtue, then the aim of the framers of 
the laws, in the first case, was a good one ; and, in 
the second case, the country has had some experi- 
ence in later times which tends to show that they 
were not altogether wrong in believing that doc- 
trines and practices which may lead to insurrection 



"RESOLUTIONS OF '98 AND '99" 233 

and civil war might best be met, so far as is possi- 
ble, at the outset. Nevertheless, the laws, under 
the circumstances of the time, were ill-considered 
and injudicious. For one reason, they put an effi- 
cient weapon into the hands of the opposition at a 
moment when it was at a loss where to turn for 
one. " Anglicism " and " British gold " were blun- 
derbusses which, in the present popular irritation 
against France, had for a time lost their useful- 
ness, and were apt to miss fire. But an appeal to 
a generous and impidsive people on behalf of the 
unfortunate refugees, who had fled from the tyr- 
anny of the Old World to find liberty and a home 
in the New, was sure to be listened to. A good 
many, besides those who assumed that republican- 
ism and the rights of man were in their special 
keeping, believed that an unfortunate class had 
been dealt with hastily, and even cruelly. The 
clamor, once begun, told heavily against the Fed- 
eralists. They could be denounced now, not only 
as the enemies of liberty in France, but as refusing 
it to men of any nation or any race who should 
seek it in the United States, — it being, of course, 
understood that races of black or yellow complex- 
ion need not apply. It was, indeed, advanced as 
an argument against one of the acts, — which gave 
the President power to order out of the country all 
aliens whose presence he thought dangerous, — 
that it might be used to prevent the importation of 
persons from Africa. On this point Mr. Gallatin, 
a native of Switzerland, was exceedingly anxious 



234 JAMES MADISON 

lest there be a violation of the Constitution. But 
the outrage upon the rights of man here appre- 
hended was the right of white men to make black 
men slaves. 

Against the enactment of these laws Mr. Jeffer- 
son did nothing as Vice-President. But whatever 
was his motive for official inaction, it was not be- 
cause he approved them. He wrote the Kentucky 
** resolutions of '98," — the strongest protest that 
could be made against them, and to be thenceforth 
held by nullifiers and secessionists as their cove- 
nant of faith. But he acted secretly, taking coun- 
sel only with George Nicholas of Kentucky and 
^ William C. Nicholas of Virginia (brothers), and, 
Hildreth says, " probably with Madison." The 
resolutions were to be offered in the Kentucky 
legislature by George Nicholas, and, with some 
modifications, were passed by that body in Novem- 
ber. A year afterward other resolutions were 
passed to reassert the opinions of the previous ses- 
sion, and to record against the laws the " solemn 
protest " of the legislature ; and further declaring 
"that a nullification by those sovereignties [the 
States] of all unauthorized acts done under color 
of that instrument [the Constitution] is the right- 
fid remedy." In the resolutions which Mr. Jeffer- 
son had prepared for Nicholas the year before, this 
essential doctrine is found in that portion which 
Nicholas had omitted, in these words, — " where 
powers are assumed which have not been delegated, 
a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy." 



"RESOLUTIONS OF '98 AND '99" 235 

As originally prepared, the resolutions were found 
in Jefferson's handwriting after his death. Hil- 
dreth's conjecture that Madison, as weU as the 
brothers Nicholas, was consulted in the prepara- 
tion of these resolutions, rests only on circumstan- 
tial evidence. The Kentucky resolutions were 
passed in November ; those of Virginia in Decem- 
ber; the former were written by Jefferson, the 
latter by Madison ; and the doctrines in each are 
essentially the same. It would have been a per- 
fectly natural thing for the two friends to consult 
together upon a measure of so much importance ; 
there is no reason why they shoidd not have done 
so ; and these coincidences suggest that they prob- 
ably did. Jefferson clearly shirked the responsi- 
bility of an act which he knew would endanger the 
Union ; but Madison made no secret, so far as can 
be seen now, of his going to Richmond, though 
not a member of the Assembly, apparently for 
the express purpose of writing these resolutions 
and urging their adoption. But Jefferson was not 
a man of courage even in doing that which he 
believed to be wise. In Madison it was only the 
conscience that was timid ; and having once con- 
vinced himseK that the thing he proposed to do 
was right, he was always ready to face the conse- 
quences. It may be that neither of them foresaw 
that the real importance of this particular act 
was rather prospective than immediate; and if 
so, their conduct is to be measured by its instant 
purpose. If Jefferson meant then and there to 



236 JAMES MADISON 

dissolve the Union, or even to weaken tlie constitu- 
tional bond that held it together, he was not over- 
cautious in keeping out of sight. But if Madison's 
intention was to strengthen the Union by with- 
standing what he believed to be a perilous viola- 
tion of the Constitution, then his courage, though 
it is to be commended, is not to be wondered at. 
That, he said, was his motive, and to defend the 
resolutions and his own part in regard to them was 
the chief interest and serious labor of the latter 
years of his life. He was elected a member of the 
Assembly for the session of 1799-1800, probably 
because he and his friends thought his official 
presence desirable when the subject should again 
come up for consideration at the reading of the 
replies from other States, to all which the resolu- 
tions had been sent. The report on those replies 
was also written by him, and the position taken the 
year before was therein reaffirmed, explained, and 
elaborated at length. 

In 1827-28 the doctrines of nullification and of 
secession were assumed to be the legitimate corollary 
of the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions of 1798 
and 1799. Jefferson was dead ; but Madison felt 
called upon to deny, in his own defense and the 
defense of the memory of his friend, that there was 
any similarity between them. From 1830 to 1836 
his mind seems to have been chiefly occupied with 
this subject, upon which he wrote many letters, and 
a paper of thirty pages, entitled "On Nullification," 
which bears the date of 1835-36, the latter year 



•'RESOLUTIONS OF '98 AND '99" 237 

being the last of his life. He resents the charge 
of any political inconsistency in the course of his 
long career, and most of all such an inconsistency 
as would impugn his attachment to the Constitu- 
tion and the Union. The resolutions of 1798, he 
maintains, do not and were not meant to assert a 
right in any one State to arrest or annul an act of 
the general government, as that is a right that can 
only belong to them collectively. Nullification 
and Secession he denounces as "twin heresies," 
that " ought to be buried in the same grave." " A 
political system," he declares, "which does not 
contain an effective provision for a peaceable deci- 
sion of all controversies arising within itself woidd 
be a government in name only." He asserts that 
"the essential difference between a free govern- 
ment and governments not free is that the former 
is founded in compact, the parties to which are 
mutually and equally bound by it. Neither of 
them, therefore, can have a greater right to break 
off from the bargain than the other or others have 
to hold them to it. . . . It is high time that the 
claim to secede at will should be put down by the 
public opinion." What, — he writes to another 
friend, — " what can be more preposterous than to 
say that the States, as united, are in no respect or 
degree a nation, which implies sovereignty, . . . 
and on the other hand, and at the same time, to 
say that the States separately are completely na- 
tions and sovereigns ? . . . The words of the Con- 
stitution are explicit, that the Constitution and 



238 JAMES MADISON 

laws of the United States shall be supreme over 
the Constitution and laws of the several States ; 
supreme in their exposition and execution, as weU 
as in their authority. Without a supremacy in 
these respects, it would be like a scabbard, in the 
hand of a soldier, without a sword in it." Abra- 
ham Lincoln might have said this twenty-eight 
years later when he determined that his first duty 
as President was to suppress insurrection. 

Such is the drift of the many pages Mr. Madi- 
son wrote upon the subject during the last five or 
six years of his life. He looked then, whatever 
he may have thought in the closing years of the 
preceding century, upon the United States as a 
nation, and not as a confederacy having its parts 
held together only by " a treaty or league " called 
a constitution. But his object is to show that 
there is nothing inconsistent in the resolutions of 
1798 with these opinions upon the sovereignty 
of the United States ; that he held them just as 
strongly then as he held them now ; and that they, 
and he as their author, looked to the States as 
a whole, not to a single State, to find and apply 
a remedy, in a constitutional way, for an unconsti- 
tutional measure of which an administration of the 
government might be guilty. His position is main- 
tained with all the acuteness, ingenuity, and logi- 
cal skill which mark his earlier writings. There is 
no sign of failure of mental power, of which those 
accused him who could not answer him. Such an 
imputation he resented with as much indignation 



"RESOLUTIONS OF '98 AND '99" 239 

as he did a charge of inconsistency, which here 
could only mean falsehood. There is no possibil- 
ity, then, of misunderstanding his opinions during 
the last six years of his life ; and the world has no 
right to doubt his repeated and earnest assurances 
that these were his opinions when he wrote the 
resolutions of 1798. It can only be said that the 
construction he gave them thirty years afterward 
is opposed to the universal understanding of them 
at the time they were written. 

But if his defense of himself be considered com- 
plete, it is not even specious when presented on 
behalf of Jefferson. Mr. Madison wrote in 1830 : 
" That the term ' nullification ' in the Kentucky 
resolutions belongs to those of 1799, with which 
Mr. Jefferson had nothing to do. . . . The resolu- 
tions of 1798, drawn by him, contain neither that 
nor any equivalent term." It was not then gen- 
erally known, whether Mr. Madison knew it or 
not, that one of the resolutions and part of an- 
other which Jefferson wrote to be offered in the 
Kentucky legislature in 1798 were omitted by Mr. 
Nicholas, and that therein was the assertion already 
quoted, — " where powers are assumed which have 
not been delegated, a nullification of the act is the 
rightful remedy." The next year, when additional 
resolutions were offered by Mr. Breckenridge, this 
idea, in similar though not in precisely the same 
language, was presented in the words, "that a 
nullification by those sovereignties [the States] 
of all unauthorized acts, done under color of that 



240 JAMES MADISON 

instrument, is the rightful remedy." In 1832, 
this fact, on the authority of Jefferson's grandson 
and executor, was made public ; and, further, that 
another declaration of Mr. Jefferson's in the reso- 
lution not used was an exhortation to the co-States 
" that each will take measures of its own for pro- 
viding that neither these acts nor any others of the 
general government, not plainly and intentionally 
authorized by the Constitution, shall be exercised 
within their respective territories." All this must 
have been known to Mr. Madison then, if not be- 
fore. Yet, three years later, in that paper " On 
Nullification " which has been mentioned, he wrote : 
" The amount of this modified right of nullifica- 
tion is, that a single State may arrest the operation 
of a law of the United States. . . . And this new- 
fangled theory is attempted to be fathered on Mr. 
Jefferson, the apostle of republicanism." It would 
be charitable here to believe that there was some 
lapse of memory in these latter days, and that he 
had forgotten that Jefferson was, above all things, 
his own words being witness, the apostle of nullifi- 
cation. 

The Alien and Sedition Laws — of which the 
more obnoxious of the former was never enforced, 
and the latter expired by limitation in two years 
— had their influence in the presidential election 
of 1800. But it was due more to differences be- 
tween the President and some of the leaders of 
the Federal party that that party lost its hold upon 
power, never to be regained. With the election of 



" RESOLUTIONS OF '98 AND '99 " 241 

Jefferson, Madison entered upon another sphere of 
duty, which was politically a promotion, but where 
his influence, if it was so large, was not so evident 
as when an active leader of his party. It was at 
Mr. Jefferson's " pressing desire," Mr. Madison 
himself says, in a letter written many years after- 
ward, that he took the office of secretary of state. 
In the same letter he explains that he had declined 
an executive appointment under Washington, be- 
cause, in taking a seat in the House of Representa- 
tives, he would be less exposed to the imputation 
of selfish views in the part he had taken in " the 
origin and adoption of the Constitution ; " because 
there, if anywhere, he could be of service in sus- 
taining it against its adversaries, especially as it 
was, " in its progress, encountering trials of a new 
sort in the formation of new parties attaching 
adverse constructions to it." The latter reason 
seems to be one of those happy after-thoughts 
which public men not imfrequently flatter them- 
selves will anticipate a question they woidd prefer 
should not be asked. Mr. Madison was a member 
of the First Congress from the first day it met, 
before the new Constitution had encountered new 
trials from new parties by any constructions either 
one way or the other. 



CHAPTER XVI 

SECRETAEY OF STATE 

On the morning of March 4, 1801, Mr. Jeffer- 
son tied his horse to the fence and walked alone 
into the Capitol to take the oath of office as Presi- 
dent. Mr, Madison was not present at that per- 
functory ceremony, the death of his aged father 
detaining him at home. He soon after, however, 
assumed the duties of the station to which Mr. 
Jefferson had called him, and there he remained 
till he took the presidential office, in his turn, eight 
years afterward. 

The new dynasty entered upon its course under 
happy circumstances. There was, of course, much 
to fear from the condition of affairs in Europe ; 
for the United States must needs be in a perilous 
position so long as the struggle for supremacy 
continued between France and England, and that 
would be while Napoleon could command an army. 
But the danger of war with France was no longer 
imminent, since Mr. Adams had wisely reestab- 
lished friendly relations, though many of the lead- 
ing Federalists believed it was at the cost of ruin to 
his own party. English aggressions upon Amer- 
ican commerce had for the moment ceased, as 



SECRETARY OF STATE 243 

fourteen years afterward they ceased altogether, 
when the provocation disappeared with the perma- 
nent establishment of peace in Europe. In the 
temporary lull of the tempest the sun shone out 
of a serene sky, and the land was blessed with 
quiet and prosperity. " Peace, commerce, and 
honest friendship with all nations, entangling alli- 
ances with none," the President said in his inaugu- 
ral address, were among " the essential principles 
of our government, and consequently those which 
ought to shape its administration." The condition 
of the country was in accord with the thought 
and may even have suggested it. " We are all 
Eepublicans ; we are all Federalists," said Jeffer- 
son in his inaugural : it was meant, however, as 
an avowal of a tolerant belief in the patriotism of 
both parties, rather than, as has sometimes been 
supposed, an assertion that party lines, so clearly 
drawn in the election, were at length obliterated. 
But hardly a year had passed before this seemed 
to be almost literally true. One after another, 
States hitherto Federal, both at the North and at 
the South, went over in their state elections to the 
Republican or Democratic party ; till, with the 
exception of Delaware, there was not a single 
Federal State outside of New England ; and even 
in that stronghold one State, Rhode Island, had 
marched off with the majority. " Everywhere," 
wrote Madison in October, "the progress of the 
public sentiment mocks the cavils and clamors of 
the malignant adversaries of the administration." 



244 JAMES MADISON 

If it may not be asserted that this overthrow of 
the Federal rule was fortunate at that juncture, — 
as nothing is more idle in history than speculation 
upon what might have been, — it may at least be 
said that Jefferson's administration for his first 
four years was a happy one for his country and 
acceptable to his countrymen. None since Wash- 
ington's has ever been so popular; and no other, 
except Lincoln's, has ever been so successful. Nor 
can it be said of it that it was a happy period 
because it is without a history ; for it included acts 
of moment, accepted then with an approbation and 
enthusiasm which time has justified. Not less 
shallow is that view of his character and of those 
years of his administration, taken by many of his 
contemporaries, who neither loved nor respected 
him, and who attributed his success and his popu- 
larity to his good fortune. This was a favorite 
and easy way, among his political opponents, of 
explaining a disagreeable fact. Parton notes in 
his Life that C. C. Pinckney could only under- 
stand Jefferson's hold upon public confidence as 
" the infatuation of the people." John Quincy 
Adams said : " Fortune has taken a pleasure in 
making Jefferson's greatest weaknesses and follies 
issue more successfully than if he had been inspired 
with the profoundest wisdom." "When the peo- 
ple," said Gouverneur Morris, "have been long 
enough drunk, they will get sober ; but while the 
frolic lasts, to reason with them is useless." There 
has been more than one occasion of late years, and 



SECRETARY OF STATE 245 

in more than one place, where this may be truly 
said of popular political enthusiasm; but it was 
not true of that which prevailed, for the first four 
years of this century ; and Mr. Adams's sarcasm 
can hardly fail to recall the fact that when Mr. 
Jefferson, in his second term, was really guilty of 
a great folly in adhering to a prolonged embargo, 
it was Mr. Adams who committed one of the few 
follies of his own life in abandoning his party to 
give his support to the President's blunder. 

Though there were many changes in Mr. Jeffer- 
son's cabinet in the course of eight years, they 
were not the result of dissensions. Yet he was, 
perhaps, more an absolute President than any 
other man who has ever held that position. He 
sought and listened to counsel, no doubt; but 
taking it was another matter. He certainly did 
not take it if it did not suit him ; and if it was not 
likely to suit him, he was in no hurry to ask for it. 
It was in his own fertile brain, not in the sugges- 
tions of others, that important measures had their 
birth. That trait in his character which phre- 
nologists have named secretiveness largely gov- 
erned his actions. It was natural for him to 
bring things about quietly and skillfully by set- 
ting others to do what he wanted done, without 
himself being seen, though sometimes there was no 
other motive than the mere gratification of secre- 
tiveness. He preferred often to suggest measures 
quietly to congressmen rather than to Congress, 
though the result in either case might be the same. 



246 JAMES MADISON 

At other times, where the end to be attained was 
of great importance and he was absolutely sure 
only of himself, he boldly took the responsibility, 
as he did in the purchase of Louisiana, and in the 
suppression of the Monroe-Pinckney treaty with 
England in his second term. It is not surprising, 
therefore, that Madison's part, during the eight 
years of Jefferson's presidency, is found to be more 
a secondary one than is usual with a secretary of 
state, or than was usual with him. He was in per- 
fect accord with his chief, who held always in the 
highest esteem his knowledge and judgment, and 
sought, no doubt, his sound and moderate advice 
when he thought he needed advice from anybody. 
But Madison's influence is less visible in Jeffer- 
son's administration than in Washington's, when 
he was in the opposition. Washington, where he 
doubted his own ability to decide a question and 
felt the need of enlightenment, was accustomed to 
call in Madison, though he did not always accept 
his friend's conclusions. It was rarely that Jeffer- 
son was troubled with any doubt of his own judg- 
ment in the discussion or decision of any question 
that might come before him. 

The most important measure of his administra- 
tion was peculiarly his own, and when once deter- 
mined upon it was pushed to a conclusion with 
vigor and courage. Nobody doubts now, or has 
doubted since the abolition of slavery, that the 
purchase of Louisiana was an act of sound states- 
manship. Jefferson did not foresee that the acqui- 



SECRETARY OF STATE 247 

sition of that fertile territory would stimulate a 
domestic trade in slaves, as profitable to the slave- 
breeding as to the slave -consuming States; or 
that, as slavery increased and brought prosperity 
and power to a class, there would grow up an 
oligarchy, resting on ownership in negroes, which, 
within sixty years, would have to be uprooted at 
an enormous cost. But his aim was to secure the 
peaceful possession of the Mississippi territory on 
both its banks, as a permanent settlement of a 
question which, so long as it remained open, was a 
perpetual menace of war with one or another Euro- 
pean power. That danger would always involve 
the possibility of the Appalachian range becoming 
the western boundary of the United States ; in 
which case the valley of the Mississippi, and the 
vast region west of it, would fall into the power 
of an alien people. So far was plain to Mr. Jef- 
ferson ; but the result of the rebellion of 1861 
proves that he was wiser than he knew when he 
acquired the territory stretching to the Sabine and 
the foot of the Rocky Mountains for the occupation 
of a free people. 

It is not necessary to repeat here the story of 
the purchase. The news of it reached Washington 
in July and was received with enthusiasm. That 
there was no warrant in the Constitution for an 
acquisition of territory by purchase was manifest ; 
and Mr. Jefferson's opponents were not in the least 
backwai'd in heaping reproaches and ridicule upon 
the great champion of strict construction, who had 



248 JAMES MADISON 

no hesitation in violating the Constitution when it 
seemed to him wise to do so. Both the President 
and his secretary frankly met the accusation by 
acknowledging its entire justice ; but at the same 
time they put in, as a sufficient defense, the plea 
of the general welfare. This did not abate the 
ridicule, though the argument was a hard one for 
the Federalists to withstand ; for it could not be 
forgotten that it was on this ground that Hamilton, 
as secretary of the treasury, had justified the im- 
position of certain taxes, and the Republicans had 
maintained that the plain limitations of the Consti- 
tution could not be overstepped on such a plea, even 
for the general good. Jefferson was so sensitive 
to this constitutional objection that he proposed to 
meet it by an amendment to the Constitution ; but 
it was soon evident that the unwritten law of mani- 
fest destiny did not need the appeal to the ballot- 
box. " The grumblers," Jefferson wrote to a friend 
soon after the news of the treaty was received, 
" gave all the credit of the acquisition to the ac- 
cident of war." " They would see," he added, in 
records on file, " that though we could not say 
when war would arise, yet we said with energy 
what would take place when it should arise." He 
only meant by this, probably, that from the begin- 
ning of his administration he had been prepared to 
take advantage of circumstances when war should 
break out again between England and France, as 
it was evident enough to the whole world that it 
must break out sooner or later. That the particu- 



SECRETARY OF STATE 249 

lar conjunction of circumstances, however, would 
occur that did occur, coidd not have been foreseen. 
Jefferson could have had no prescience that Spain 
would reconvey Louisiana to France ; that Napo- 
leon would enter at once upon extensive prepara- 
tions for colonization on the banks of the Missis- 
sippi ; and that he would be willing to relinquish 
this important step in his great scheme of a uni- 
versal Latin Emj^ire, that he might devote himself 
to the necessary preliminary work of subduing his 
most formidable enemy of the rival race. But it 
is Jefferson's best title to fame that he was ready 
to take advantage of this conjunction of incidents 
at exactly the right moment. Doubtless the pro- 
gress of civilization would have been essentially 
the same had he never been born. But having 
been born it fell to him to contribute largely to 
the events that have distributed the race speaking 
the English tongue the most widely over the globe, 
and to exercise a powerful influence upon the age. 
It does not detract from the merit of his act, how- 
ever, that he by no means saw all its importance, 
nor even dreamed of its consequences. The region 
beyond the Mississippi, he thought, might be 
made useful as a refuge for Indian tribes of the 
East ; but he neither saw nor could see then that 
the purchase of Louisiana was the essential though 
only the preliminary step toward the occupation 
of the continent to the Pacific by the English race. 
The expedition of Lewis and Clarke, which he sent 
out the next year, was in the interest of science, 



250 JAMES MADISON 

and especially of geography, rather than of any 
possible settlement of that distant region. Indeed, 
he said that if the new acquisition of territory were 
wisely managed, so as to induce the eastern Indians 
to cross the great river, the result would be the 
" condensing, instead of scattering, our popula- 
tion." But " man proposes and God disposes." 

The immediate consequences, however, of the 
acquisition of Louisiana were enough to bring 
almost universal popularity to the President, es- 
pecially at the South and West, without any 
revelation of the future. Nor was the act the less 
popular because it was an immediate stimulus to 
the foreign slave trade, partly because at the 
North that excited but little interest, and partly 
because at the South it excited a great deal. The 
abolition societies, it is true, asked that the impor- 
tation of slaves from Africa into the annexed ter- 
ritory should be forbidden ; and an act was passed 
prohibiting their introduction, except by those 
persons from other parts of the United States who 
intended to be actual settlers, and were, therefore, 
permitted to bring slaves imported previous to 
1798. But the law might properly have been 
entitled An Act for the Encouragement of the 
Trade in Negroes ; and so it seems to have been 
regarded by the older slave States. South Caro- 
lina reopened the trade to Africa, and, as Congress 
failed to levy the constitutional tax of ten dollars 
a head, the raw material, so to speak, came in free. 
The rest could be safely left to the law of supply 



SECRETARY OF STATE 251 

and demand. Neither South Carolina nor any 
other State had imported slaves since 1798. The 
whole slave population, therefore, could be legally 
taken into Louisiana by actual settlers, and its 
place supplied in the old States by new importa- 
tions. The demand regulated the supply, and the 
supply came from Africa as truly as if the impor- 
tation had been direct to New Orleans. This was 
the legal course of trade tiU 1808 ; thenceforward 
it flourished, without the protection of law but in 
spite of it, so long as it was profitable, — so long, 
that is, as the natural increase of the eastern negro 
was insufficient to answer the demand of the south- 
western market. 

But, besides the peaceful extension of the na- 
tional domain, there was much else in the first 
four or five years of Jefferson's administration to 
commend it to his countrymen. His party had 
nothing to complain of, despite that genial and 
generous assurance of the inaugural which could 
not be forgotten, — " we are all Republicans ; we 
are all Federalists ; " and the other party had rear 
son to be thankful that, considering, as he said, 
"a Federalist seldom died, and never resigned," 
the niunber was not large who were reminded, by 
their removal from office, of their unreasonable 
delay in doing either the one thing or the other. 
It was only the politicians, however, a class much 
smaller then than it is now, who were concerned 
in such matters; the people at large were influ- 
enced by other considerations. Credit was given 



252 JAMES MADISON 

to the President for things that he did not do, as 
well as for things that he did. It was due to him 
that the administration was an economical one, 
but it was through Mr. Gallatin's skillful manage- 
ment of the finances that the old public debt was 
in process of speedy extinction. Occasional im- 
peachments enlivened the proceedings of Congress, 
which otherwise were as harmless as they were 
dull. Jefferson was never so much out of his 
proper element as in war, yet a successful one was 
carried on, during his first term, with the Barbary 
States which put an end for many years to the 
exactions and outrages which had long been need- 
lessly submitted to. It was a war, however, of 
only a few naval vessels in the hands of such ener- 
getic and brave men, destined to become famous 
in later years, as Bainbridge, Decatur, Preble, and 
Barron ; and to send off the expedition was about 
all the government had to do with it. It was easy 
to keep clear of " entangling alliances," or entan- 
glements of any sort with European powers, so long 
as they left the commerce of the United States to 
pursue its peaceful and profitable course without 
molestation. This both England and France did 
for several years, and there fell, in consequence, 
an immense carrying trade into the hands of 
American merchants, which brought prosperity to 
the whole country such as was never known before, 
and was not known again, after it was lost, for 
near a quarter of a century. All these things 
made Mr. Jefferson acceptable to the people as 



SECRETARY OF STATE 263 

almost a heaven-appointed President. If, as John 
Quincy Adams thought, Fortune delighted to beam 
upon him with her sunniest smiles, he knew, at 
least, how best to take advantage of them. While 
they lasted, his secretary of state sat in their light 
and warmth, quietly and contentedly busy and in 
the diligent and faithful discharge of official duty, 
which could not in those years of prosperous tran- 
quillity be over-burdensome. 



CHAPTER XVn 

THE EMBARGO 

Almost at the beginning of his second terra, 
Jefferson found himself in troubled waters, as the 
United States was drawn slowly but surely into 
the vortex of European war. The carrying trade 
at home and abroad had fallen very much into the 
hands of Americans, and this became the root of 
bitterness. The tonnage of their vessels employed 
in foreisTi trade and entered at the custom-houses of 
the United States was equal to nearly four fifths 
of the tonnage of British vessels engaged in the 
same traffic and entered at home. But there was 
this difference : the foreign commerce of Great 
Britain was almost all carried on from her own 
ports, and the returns, therefore, showed its full 
volume. On the other hand, the American ships 
were largely the carriers between the ports of the 
belligerents and of other powers in Europe, and 
there were no entries at the American custom- 
houses of their employment, or that they were em- 
ployed at all. As early as 1804-5, the aggregate 
value of this foreign trade in the hands of Ameri- 
cans was probably much larger than that controlled 
by English merchants; and the former increased 



THE EMBARGO 255 

to the time of the promulgation of the Berlin 
decree of 1806, and the British orders in coimcil 
of the next year. Nor was it only that wealth 
flowed into the country as the immediate return 
from this trade abroad. It stimulated enterprise 
and industiy at home by the increase of capital ; 
and there was not only more money to work with, 
but more to spend. Consequently the increase in 
exports and in imports grew steadily. In 1805, 
1806, and 1807, about one half the average total 
exports, something over the value of twenty mil- 
lion dollars, went to Great Britain alone ; and 
the value of the imports from that country for the 
same period was about sixty million dollars a year. 
Nor did this disproportion, though increasing with 
the growing prosperity, represent a general bal- 
ance of trade against the United States, as one 
school of political economists would insist it must 
have done. For the imports were small from other 
European countries in exchange for American 
products ; and the difference, together with the 
profits of the carrying trade abroad, was remitted 
in English manufactures. In other words, the im- 
ports from England represented the returns for all 
exports to Europe, and the returns also — available 
in the first instance through bills of exchange — 
of the trade which had been gained by Americans, 
and lost by those nations whose ships the war had 
driven from the ocean. 

The British manufacturer had no reason for dis- 
content with this state of things. The best market 



256 JAMES MADISON 

for his goods was constantly improving, and he 
did not much care who took them to America. 
But the English government, and the English mer- 
chants who owned ships, looked on with neither 
pleasure nor patience. It was impossible not to 
see that the United States was fast becoming a 
great commercial rival. This in itself was bad 
enough ; but it was the harder to bear when it was 
remembered — and it coidd not be forgotten — 
that the rivalry came from States so lately in revolt 
against England, and that their President at that 
moment was one of the most obnoxious of the 
rebels. Then what did it avail that England was 
mistress of the seas, if her formidable enemy could 
laugh at any effort of hers to destroy the com- 
merce of France, so long as that commerce could 
be carried on in safety under a neutral flag ? If 
that flag must be respected, English naval vessels 
and privateers would cruise in vain for prizes, for 
the merchant ships of any belligerent, not strong 
enough to protect them, stayed in port. It had 
not yet come to be the acknowledged law of nations 
that free ships make free goods. But nearly the 
same purpose was answered if the property of 
belligerents could be safely carried in neutral ships 
under the pretense of being owned by neutrals. 
The products of the French colonies, for example, 
could be loaded on board of American vessels, 
taken to the United States and reshipped there for 
France as American property. England looked 
upon this as an evasion of the recognized public 



THE EMBARGO 267 

law that property of belligerents was good prize. 
Accordingly, when she saw that French commerce 
was thus put out of her reach, and that the rival 
she most dreaded was growing rich and powerful 
in the possession of it, she sought a remedy and 
was not long in finding one. 

It was denied that neutrals could take advantage 
of a state of war to enter upon a trade which had 
not existed in time of peace ; and American ships 
were seized on the high seas, taken into port, and 
condemned in the admiralty courts for carrying 
enemy's goods in such a trade. The exercise of 
that right, if it were one by the recognized law of 
nations, woidd be of great injury to American com- 
merce, unless it could be successfully resisted. To 
show that it was not good law, Mr. Madison wrote 
his " Examination of the British Doctrine which 
Subjects to Capture a Neutral Trade not Open 
in the Time of Peace." The essay was a careful 
and thorough discussion of the whole question, and 
showed by citations from the most eminent writers 
on international law, by the terms of treaties, and 
by the conduct of nations in the past, that the 
British doctrine was erroneous and would lead to 
other infringements of the rights of neutrals. But 
argument, however unanswerable, has never yet 
brought the British government to reason, unless 
there was something behind it not so easy to dis- 
regard. The appropriation for Mr. Jefferson's 
gunboats could not get that naval arm ready for 
effective service much before the year 1815, even 



258 JAMES MADISON 

if it could then be of use ; and there was, more- 
over, this further difficulty in the way of its effi- 
ciency at the time, — that, as it could not go to the 
enemy, it must wait for the enemy to come to it ; 
the conflagration would have to be brought to the 
fire-engines. A war with England must be a naval 
war ; and the United States not only had no navy 
of any consequence, but it was a part of Mr. Jef- 
ferson's policy, in contrast with the policy of the 
preceding administrations, that there should be 
none, except these gunboats kept on wheels and 
under cover in readiness to repel an invasion. But 
there was no fear of invasion, for by that England 
could gain nothing. " She is renewing," Madison 
wrote in the autumn of 1805, " her depredations 
on our commerce in the most ruinous shapes, and 
has kindled a more general indignation among our 
merchants than was ever before expressed." 

These depredations were not confined to the 
seizing and confiscating American ships under 
the pretense that their cargoes were contraband. 
Seamen were taken out of them on the charge of 
being British subjects and deserters, not only on 
the high seas in larger numbers than ever before, 
but within the waters of the United States. No 
doubt these seamen were often British subjects 
and their seizure was justifiable, provided England 
could rightfully extend to all parts of the globe 
and to the ships of all nations the merciless sys- 
tem of impressment to which her own people were 
compelled to submit at home. Monroe, in a note 



THE EMBARGO 259 

to Madison, said that the British minister had 
informed him that " great abuses were committed 
in granting protections " in America, and acknow- 
ledged that "he gave me some examples which 
were most shameful." But even if it could be 
granted that English naval officers might seize 
such men without recourse to law, wherever they 
should be found and without respect for the flag 
of another nation, it was a national insult and 
outrage, calling for resentment and resistance, to 
impress American citizens under the pretense that 
they were British subjects. But what was the 
remedy ? As a last resort in such cases, nations 
have but one. Diplomacy and legislation may be 
first tried, but, if these fail, war must be the final 
ordeal. For this the administration made no 
preparation, and the more evident the unreadiness 
the less was the chance of redress in any other 
way. Immediate war would, of course, have been 
unwise ; for what could a nation almost without a 
ship hope from a contest with a power having the 
largest and most efficient navy in the world ? If 
this, however, was true from 1805 to 1807, it was 
not less true in 1812. But it need not have been 
true when war was actually resorted to, had the 
intervening years been years of preparation. The 
fact was, however, that the party which supported 
the administration was no more in favor of war at 
the earlier period than the administration itself 
was ; and meanwhile, till a war party had come 
into existence and gained the ascendency, the 



260 JAMES MADISON 

country had been growing every year less and less 
in a condition to appeal to war. 

The first measure adopted to meet the aggres- 
sions of the English was an act prohibiting the 
importation of certain British products. This had 
always been a favorite policy with Madison. He 
had advanced and upheld it in former years, when 
a member of Congress, and when Great Britain 
had first violated the rights and dignity of the 
United States by interference with her foreign 
trade and by impressing her citizens. Non-inter- 
course had been an effective measure thirty years 
before, and had a kind of prestige as an American 
policy. It was not seen, perhaps could not be seen 
without experience, that a measure suited to the 
colonial condition was not sufficient for an inde- 
pendent nation. But the President and secretary 
were in perfect accord; for Jefferson preferred 
anything to war, and Madison was persuaded that 
England would be brought to terms by the loss of 
the best market for her manufactures. Others, 
and notably John Randolph, saw in the measure 
only the first step which, if persisted in, must lead 
to war ; while, in the mean time, to interfere with 
importations would be quite as great an injury to 
the United States as to Great Britain. Randolph 
was apt to blurt out a good deal of truth when it 
happened to suit him. Impressment, he said, was 
an old grievance which had been thought a suffi- 
cient provocation for war when the nation was not 
prepared ; and it was no more ready to resort to 



THE EMBARGO 261 

that desperate remedy now than it had been in the 
past. Without a navy it would be impossible to 
prevent the blockading of all the principal Ameri- 
can ports by English squadrons. The United 
States would need an ally, and he was not willing 
she should throw herself into the arms of that power 
which was seeking universal conquest. France, he 
said, would be the tyrant of the ocean if the Brit- 
ish navy shoidd be driven from it. The commerce, 
moreover, which it was proposed to protect, was 
not the " honest trade of America," but " a mush- 
room, a fungus of war, — a trade which, so soon as 
the nations of Europe are at peace, will no longer 
exist." It was only " a carrying trade which cov- 
ers enemy's property ; " and he did not believe in 
plunging a great agricultural country into war for 
the benefit of the shipping merchants of a few 
seaports. There were many who agreed with him ; 
for it was one of the cardinal principles of the Jef- 
fersonian school of politics that between commerce 
and agriculture there was a natural antagonism. 

But the administration did not rely upon legis- 
lation alone in this emergency. The President 
followed up the act prohibiting the introduction 
of British goods by sending William Pinkney to 
England in the spring of 1806 to join Monroe, 
the resident minister, in an attempt at negotiation. 
These commissioners soon wrote that there was 
good reason for hoping that a treaty would be 
concluded, and thereupon the non-importation act 
was for a time suspended. In December came the 



262 JAMES MADISON 

news that a treaty was agreed upon, and soon after 
it was received by the President. The most seri- 
ous difficulty in the way of negotiation had been 
the question of impressment. The British govern- 
ment claimed the right to arrest deserters from its 
service anywhere outside the jurisdiction of other 
nations, and that jurisdiction, it was maintained, 
could not extend beyond the coast limit over the 
open sea, the highway of all nations. There was 
an evident disposition, however, to come to some 
compromise. The English commissioners proposed 
that their government should prohibit, under pen- 
alty, the seizure of American citizens anywhere, 
and that the United States should forbid, on her 
part, the granting of certificates of citizenship to 
British subjects, of which deserters took advantage. 
But as this would be an acknowledgment virtually 
of the right of search on board American ships, 
and the denial of citizenship in the United States 
to foreigners, the American commissioners could 
not entertain that proposition. They were willing, 
however, if the assumed right to board American 
ships were given up, to agree, on behalf of their 
government, to aid in the arrest and return of Brit- 
ish deserters when seeking a refuge in the United 
States. But to this the British commissioners 
would not accede. 

Monroe and Pinkney were enjoined, in the in- 
structions written by the secretary of state, to make 
the abandonment of impressment the first condi- 
tion of a treaty. A treaty, nevertheless, was agreed 



THE EMBARGO 263 

upon, without this provision. But when it was sent 
to the President, the ministers explained : — 

"That, although this government [the British] did 
not feel at liberty to relmquish, fonnally, by treaty, its 
claim to search our merchant vessels for British seamen, 
its practice would nevertheless be essentially, if not com- 
pletely, abandoned. That opinion has since been con- 
firmed by frequent conferences on the subject with the 
British commissioners, who have repeatedly assured us 
that, in their judgment, we were made as sure against 
the exercise of their pretension by the policy which their 
government had adopted in regard to that very delicate 
and important question, as we could have been made by 
treaty." 

These assurances did not satisfy the President. 
"Without consulting the Senate, though Congress 
was in session when the treaty was received, and 
although the Senate had been previously informed 
that one had been agreed upon, the President 
rejected it. On several other points it was not 
acceptable ; but, as Mr. Madison wrote to a friend, 
" the case of impressments particularly ha%ang 
been brought to a formal issue, and having been 
the primary object of an extraordinary mission, 
a treaty could not be closed which was silent on 
that subject." The commissioners, therefore, were 
ordered to renew negotiations. This they faith- 
fully tried to do for a year, but were finally told by 
the British minister that a treaty once concluded 
and signed, but afterward rejected in part by one 
of the contracting powers, could not again be taken 



264 JAMES MADISON 

up for consideration. The opponents of tlie ad- 
ministration made the most of this action of Mr. 
Jefferson. The country was not permitted to for- 
get, even were f orgetfulness possible, that thousands 
of seamen had been taken from American vessels, 
and that the larger proportion of these were native- 
born citizens of the United States. Not that these 
opponents wanted war ; that, they believed, would 
be ruinous without a navy, and therefore some 
reasonable compromise was all that could be hoped 
for. But what was to be thought of an adminis- 
tration that would not go to war because it was 
not prepared ; would not prepare in the hope that 
some future conjunction of circumstances would 
stave off that last resort; and, meanwhile, would 
accept no terms which might at least mitigate the 
injuries visited upon the sea-faring people of the 
United States, and possibly relieve the nation from 
an insolent exercise of power which it was not 
strong enough to resent ? 

As England's need of seamen increased, the 
captains of her cruisers, encouraged by the failure 
of negotiation, grew bolder in overhauling Amer- 
ican ships and taking out as many men as they 
believed, or pretended to believe, were deserters. 
In the summer of 1807 an outrage was perpetrated 
on the frigate Chesapeake, as if to emphasize 
the contempt with which a nation must be looked 
upon which only screamed like a woman at wrongs 
which it wanted the courage and strength to resent, 
or the wisdom to compound for. The Chesapeake 



THE EMBARGO 265 

was followed out of the harbor of Norfolk by the 
British man-of-war Leopard, and when a few miles 
at sea, the Chesapeake being brought to imder the 
pretense that the English captain wished to put 
some dispatches on board for Europe, a demand 
was made for certain deserters supposed to be on 
the American frigate. Commodore Barron replied 
that he knew of no deserters on his ship, and that 
he coidd permit no search to be made, even if there 
were. After some further altercation the English- 
man fired a broadside, killing and wounding a 
number of the Chesapeake's crew. Commodore 
Barron coidd do nothing else but surrender, for 
he had only a single gun in readiness for use, and 
that was fired only once and then with a coal from 
the cook's galley. The ship was then boarded, the 
crew mustered, and four men arrested as deserters. 
Three of them were negroes, — two natives of the 
United States, the other of South America. The 
fourth man, probably, was an Englishman. They 
were all deserters from English men-of-war lying 
off Norfolk ; but the three negroes declared that 
they had been kidnaped, and their right to escape 
could not be justly questioned ; indeed, the English 
afterward took this view of it apparently, for the 
men were released on the arrival of the Leopard at 
Halifax. But the fourth man was hanged. 

For this direct national insult, explanation, apo- 
logy, and reparation were demanded, and at the 
same time the President put forth a proclamation 
forbidding all British ships of war to remain in 



266 JAMES MADISON 

American waters. Of how much use the latter 
was we learn from a letter of Madison to Monroe : 
" They continue to defy it," he wrote, " not only 
by remaining within our waters, but by chasing 
merchant vessels arriving and departing." Some 
preparation was made for war, but it was only to 
call upon the militia to be in readiness, and to 
order Mr. Jefferson's gimboats to the most ex- 
posed ports. Great Britain was not alarmed. The 
captain of the Leopard, indeed, was removed from 
his command, as having exceeded his duty ; but a 
proclamation on that side was also issued, requiring 
all ships of war to seize British seamen on board 
foreign merchantmen, to demand them from for- 
eign ships of war, and if the demand was refused 
to report the fact to the admiral of the fleet. It 
was not till after four years of irritating contro- 
versy that any settlement was reached in regard to 
the affair of the Chesapeake. 

New perils all the while were besetting Amer- 
ican commerce. In November, 1806, Napoleon's 
Berlin decree was promulgated, forbidding the 
introduction into France of the products of Great 
Britain and her colonies, whether in her own ships 
or those of other nations. This was in violation 
of the convention between France and the United 
States, if it was meant that American vessels 
should come under the prohibition ; but for a time 
there was some hope that they might be excepted. 
In the course of the year, however, it was officially 
declared in Paris that the treaty would not be 



THE EMBARGO 267 

allowed to weaken the force of a war measure 
aimed at Great Britain. Under this decision, car- 
goes already seized were confiscated and the trade 
of the United States faced a new calamity. The 
decree, it was declared, was a rightful retaliation 
of a British order in council of six months be- 
fore, which had established a partial blockade of 
a portion of the French coast. In the kidnaping 
business, France could not, of course, compete 
with England ; for there were few of her citizens 
to be found on board of American vessels, and to 
seize a Yankee sailor, under the pretense that he 
was a Frenchman, was an absurdity never thought 
of. But hundi'eds of Americans, the crews of ships 
seized for violation of the terms of the Berlin de- 
cree, were thrown into French prisons. So far, 
therefore, as the United States had good ground of 
complaint on any score against either power, there 
was little to choose between them. Mr. Jefferson's 
repugnance to war was sufficient to hold him back 
from one with England, though he might have had 
France for an ally ; still more unwilling was he, by 
a war with France, to make a friend of England, 
whom he still looked ujion as the natural enemy of 
the United States; for, notwithstanding all that 
had come and gone, he still regarded France with 
something of the old affection. In the autumn of 
1807 he called a special session of Congress in con- 
sideration of the increasing aggressions of Great 
Britain, especially in the attack upon the Chesa- 
peake, and the injury done by the interdiction of 



268 JAMES MADISON 

neutral trade with any country witli which that 
power was at war. But he had no recommenda- 
tions to offer of resistance nor even of defense, 
except that some additions be made to the gun- 
boats, and that sailors on shore be enrolled as a 
sort of gunboat militia. The probable real pur- 
pose of calling the extra session, however, appeared 
in about two weeks, when he sent a special mes- 
sage to the Senate recommending an embargo. 

An act was almost immediately passed which, 
if anything more was needed to complete the ruin 
of American commerce, supplied that deficiency. 
A month before this time the English ministry had 
issued a new order in council — the news of which 
reached Jefferson as he was about to send in his 
message — proclaiming a blockade of pretty much 
all Europe, and forbidding any trade in neutral 
vessels unless they had first gone into some British 
port and paid duties on their cargoes ; and within 
twenty -four hours of the President's message 
recommending the embargo. Napoleon proclaimed 
a new decree from Milan, by which it was declared 
that any ship was lawful prize that had anything 
whatever to do with Great Britain, — that should 
pay it tribute, that should carry its merchandise, 
that should be bound either to or from any of its 
ports. All that these powers could do to shut 
every trading vessel out of all European ports was 
now done ; and at this opportune moment Mr. 
Jefferson came to their aid by compelling all 
American vessels to stay at home. It is not easy 



THE EMBARGO 269 

in our time to conceive of a President proposing, 
or of a party accepting, or of the peoj^le submit- 
ting to, such a measure as this. But Mr. Jeffer- 
son's followers were very obedient, and there was, 
undoubtedly, a very general belief that trade with 
the United States was so important to the nations 
at war that for the sake of its renewal the obnox- 
ious decrees and orders in council would soon be 
repealed. But, except upon certain manufacturers 
in England, little influence was visible. General 
Armstrong, the American minister in France, 
wrote : " Here it is not felt ; and in England, amid 
the more recent and interesting events of the day, 
it is forgotten." When, however, the effect was 
evident at home of a law forbidding any American 
vessels from going to sea, even to catch fish, and 
prohibiting the export of any of the products 
of the United States, either in their own ships or 
those of any other country, then there arose a 
popular clamor for the abandonment of a policy 
so ruinous. AVithin four months of its enactment, 
Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts declared, in a 
debate in Congress, that " an experiment such as 
is now making was never before — I will not say 
tried — it never before entered into the human 
imagination. There is nothing like it in the nar- 
rations of history or in the tales of fiction. All 
the habits of a mighty nation are at once counter- 
acted. All their property depreciated. All their 
external connections violated. Five millions of 
people are engaged. They cannot go beyond the 



270 JAMES MADISON 

limits of that once free country ; now they are 
not even permitted to thrust their own property 
through the grates." While American ships at 
home were kept there, those which had remained 
abroad to escape the embargo were met by a new 
peril. Some of them were in French ports await- 
ing a turn in affairs ; others ventured to load with 
English goods in English ports, to be landed in 
France under the pretense, supported by fraudu- 
lent papers, that they were direct from the United 
States or other neutral country. The fraud was 
too transparent to escape detection long, and Na- 
poleon thereupon issued, in the spring of 1808, the 
Bayonne decree authorizing the seizure and confis- 
cation of all American vessels. They were either 
English or American, he said ; if the former, they 
were enemy's ships and liable to capture ; but if 
the latter, they should be at home, and he was only 
enforcing the embargo law of the United States, 
which she ought to thank him for. 

The prosperity and tranquillity which marked 
the earlier years of Jefferson's administration dis- 
appeared in its last year. Congress, both in its 
spring and winter sessions, could talk of little else 
but the disastrous embargo ; proposing, on the one 
hand, to make it the more stringent by an enforce- 
ment act, and, on the other, to substitute for it 
non-intercourse with England and France, restor- 
ing trade with the rest of the world, and leaving 
the question of decrees and orders in council open 
for future consideration. The President no longer 



THE EMBAKGO 271 

held his party under perfect control. The mis- 
chievous results of the embargo policy were evi- 
dent enough to a sufficient number of Kepublicans 
to secure in February, 1809, the repeal of that 
measure, to take effect the next month as to all 
countries except England and France, and, with 
regard to them, at the adjournment of the next 
Congi-ess. But the prohibition of importation from 
both these latter countries was continued till the 
obnoxious orders in council and the decrees should 
be repealed. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

MADISON AS PRESIDENT 

Mr. Jefferson named his own successor. Of 
the three Democratic candidates, Madison, Mon- 
roe, and George Clinton, he preferred Madison 
now, and urged Monroe to wait patiently as next 
in succession. Beyond two lives he did not, per- 
haps, think proper to dictate ; and, besides, Clinton 
was not a Virginian. What little opposition there 
was to Madison in his own party came from those 
who feared that he was too thoroughly identified 
with Jefferson's policy to untie the knot in which 
the foreign relations of the country had become 
entangled. Of the 175 electoral votes, however, 
he received 122 ; but that was fewer by 39 than 
had been cast for Jefferson four years before. 
Of the New England States, Vermont alone gave 
him its votes, changing places with Rhode Island, 
which had wheeled into line again with the Fed- 
eralists. 

During the winter of 1808-9, after Madison's 
election but before his inauguration, he had qui- 
etly conferred with Erskine, the British minis- 
ter at Washington, upon the condition of affairs. 
Much was hoped from these conferences ; but the 



MADISON AS PRESIDENT 273 

end which they helped to bring about was the 
reverse of what was hoped for. Could Madison 
have had his way, he would probably have pre- 
ferred that Congress should have left untouched 
at that session the questions of embargo and non- 
intercourse ; for the tone of the debates and the 
tendency of legislation naturally led the English 
ministry to doubt the assurances which Erskine 
gave that these proceedings did not triUy represent 
the friendly disposition of the incoming President. 
In answer to those representations, however, there 
came in April from Canning, the foreign secre- 
tary, certain propositions which were so presented 
by Erskine, and so received by the administra- 
tion, as to promise a settlement of all differences 
between the two governments. Erskine was a 
young man, anxious very likely for distinction; 
but a laudable ambition to be of service in a 
good cause made him over-zealous. He exceeded 
the letter of his instructions, while keeping, as he 
thought, to their spirit. Probably he mistook their 
spirit in assuming that his government cared more 
to secure a settlement of existing difficulties than 
for the precise terms and minor details by which 
it should be reached. At any rate, he agreed that 
Great Britain would withdraw her orders in coun- 
cil provided the United States would maintain the 
non-intercourse acts against France so long as the 
Berlin and Milan decrees remained in force. This 
being secured, he did not insist upon two other 
conditions — partly because it was represented to 



274 JAMES MADISON 

him that they would need some action by Congress, 
and partly because he believed that the essential 
point was gained by an agreement on the part of the 
United States to enforce non-intercourse against 
France while her decrees were unrepealed. These 
other conditions were, first, that the United States 
should cease to insist upon the right to carry on 
in time of war the colonial trade of a belligerent 
which had not been open in time of peace to 
neutrals ; and, second, the acknowledgment that 
British men-of-war might rightfully seize Amer- 
ican merchant vessels when transgressing the non- 
intercourse laws against France. He also proposed 
a settlement of the Chesapeake question, but omit- 
ted to say, as Canning had instructed him to say, 
that some provision would be made, as an act of 
generosity and not of right, for the wives and chil- 
dren of the men who were kiUed on board that 
ship. But when that settlement was accepted by 
the administration, he failed to resent some reflec- 
tions from Robert Smith, the secretary of state, on 
the conduct of Great Britain in that affair, which 
Canning, when he heard of them, thought should 
have been resented and their recall demanded, or 
the negotiation stopped. 

On the terms, however, as Erskine chose to 
present them, an agreement was reached, and the 
President issued a proclamation repealing the acts 
of embargo and non-intercourse as against Great 
Britain and her colonies after June 10. On that 
day more than a thousand ships, loaded and riding 



MADISON AS PRESIDENT 275 

at anchor in all the principal ports in anxious 
readiness for the signal for flight, spread their 
wings, like a flock of long-imprisoned birds, and 
flew out to sea. There was an almost universal 
shout of gratitude to the new President, who, in 
the first three months of his administration, had 
banished the fear of war abroad, and at home was 
sweeping away involuntary idleness, want, and 
ominous discontent. Madison had known some- 
thing of popularity during his long career ; but 
never before had he felt the exidtation of riding 
upon the very crest of a mighty wave of popular 
applause. But it was one of those waves that 
collapse suddenly into a surprising flatness. Can- 
ning repudiated all that Erskine had done and 
immediately recalled him. The ships that had 
gone to sea, under the sanction of the President's 
proclamation, were permitted by an order in coun- 
cil to complete their voyages unmolested ; but 
otherwise all commerce was once more brought to 
a standstill. It would have been easier to bear 
some fresh misfortune than to be compelled to 
struggle again with calamities so well understood 
and which it was hoped had been left behind for- 
ever. Gallatin had been retained in the Treasury 
Department and was the President's chief adviser, 
and the two were now accused of having been 
either imbecile or treacherous. It was openly said 
that they had led the young minister to agree 
to an arrangement which they knew his govern- 
ment would not sanction. But they could hardly 



276 JAMES MADISON 

have been so foolish as to make a bargain with the 
certainty that it would stand only so long as a ship 
could go and come across the Atlantic. Nobody 
understood better than Madison how grateful a 
reconciliation with England would be to a large 
proportion of the people, and nobody was more 
disappointed that the negotiations came to worse 
than nothing, inasmuch as their failure led to new 
embarrassments. 

He said with some bitterness, in a letter to Jef- 
ferson, early in August: "You will see by the 
instructions to Erskine, as published by Canning, 
that the latter was as much determined that there 
should be no adjustment as the former was that 
there should be one." He was unjust to Canning; 
the real fault was with Erskine, and with him only 
because his zeal outran his judgment. In another 
letter to Jefferson, the President says : " Erskine 
is in a ticklish situation with his government. I 
suspect he will not be able to defend himself against 
the charges of exceeding his instructions, notwith- 
standing the appeal he makes to simdry others not 
published. But he will make out a strong case 
against Canning, and be able to avail himself 
much of the absurdity and evident inadmissibility 
of the articles disregarded by him." Possibly Mr. 
Erskine considered that his government would ap- 
prove of his not urging these points too earnestly, 
inasmuch as the other side refrained from insisting 
upon the abandonment of impressment of seamen 
on board American ships. But Mr. Madison's 



MADISON AS PRESIDENT 277 

indignation must have covered up a good deal of 
mortification. He could hardly have been without 
the sensation of one hoisted by his own petard. It 
was only two years since Mr. Jefferson, with his 
approval, had rejected the Monroe-Pinkney treaty 
because instructions had not been literally com- 
plied with. Mr. Canning, in following that exam- 
ple, could have pleaded, had he chosen, much the 
stronger justification, under the circumstances of 
the two cases ; and Mr. Madison could not fail to 
remember, without being reminded of it, when this 
agreement was thrown back in his face, that he 
had been willing to accept it without any protec- 
tion of the rights of American seamen, the want of 
which was the ostensible reason for rejecting the 
Monroe-Pinkney treaty. 

However, the administration was now compelled 
to meet anew the old difficulties which the Erskine 
agreement had failed to dispose of. The Presi- 
dent's first duty was to issue a second proclama- 
tion, recalling the previous one which had sent to 
sea every American ship in port. They could all 
come back, if they would, to be made fast again 
at their wharves, till the recurrent tides at last 
should ripple in and out of their open seams, and 
their yards and masts drop piecemeal upon the 
rotting decks. But many never came back, pre- 
ferring rather the risk of being sunk or burned 
at sea, which happened to not a few, or of cap- 
ture and confiscation by the belligerents whose 
laws they defied. Erskine was followed by a new 



278 JAMES MADISON 

ambassador from England, Mr. Jackson. His mis- 
sion, however, had no other result than to widen 
the breach between the two nations. A contro- 
versy almost immediately arose between the min- 
ister and Mr. Smith, the secretary of state, — or 
rather Mr. Madison himself, who, as he complained 
at a later period, did most of Smith's work as 
well as his own, — touching the arrangement with 
Erskine. Jackson intimated, or was understood 
as intimating, that the administration must have 
known the precise terms on which Erskine was 
empowered to treat with the government of the 
United States ; and when a denial was made with 
a good deal of emphasis on the part of the admin- 
istration, the insinuation was repeated almost as a 
direct charge. Of course there could be but one 
conclusion to correspondence of this sort ; further 
communication with Jackson was declined and his 
recall asked for. 

It was plain enough in the latter months of 
Jefferson's administration, to himself as well as to 
everybody else, that the embargo had not only 
failed to bring the belligerents to terms abroad, 
but that it had added greatly to the distress at 
home. That the measure was a failure, Madison 
himself acknowledged in one of his retrospective 
letters written in the retirement of Montpellier, 
sixteen years afterward. It was meant, he said in 
that letter, as an experimental measm-e, preferable 
to naked submission or to war at a time when war 
was inexpedient. It failed, he added, " because 



MADISON AS PRESIDENT 279 

the government did not sufficiently distrust those 
in a certain quarter whose successful violation of 
the law led to the general discontent, which called 
for its repeal." That is to say, the government 
relied too confidently upon the submission of New 
England ; was too ready to believe that her mer- 
chants would not let their ships slip quietly out to 
sea whenever they could evade the officers of the 
customs, nor slip in to land a cargo at some unfre- 
quented place where there was no custom-house. 
" The patriotic fishermen of Marblehead," he says, 
" at one time offered their services ; " and he regrets 
they were not sent out as privateers to seize these 
contraband ships as prizes, and to " carry them into 
ports where the tribunals would enforce the law." 
Apparently there was not a reasonable doubt in 
his mind whether such tribunals could be found in 
any port along the coast of New England. It is 
also rather more than doubtful — even assuming 
that there was much of the kind of patriotism 
which he says existed in Marblehead — how long, 
had the government offered commissions to private 
citizens to prey upon their neighbors, the embargo 
would have been respected at all east of Long 
Island Sound. But this was the afterthought of 
1826. Madison's policy in 1809-10 was rather to 
conciliate than provoke " those in a certain quar- 
ter." He could not command entire unanimity 
even in his own party. Congress passed the winter 
in vain efforts to find some common ground, not 
merely for Democrats and Federalists, but for the 



280 JAMES MADISON 

Democrats alone. Various measures were pro- 
posed to meet the critical condition of the country. 
Some were too radical ; some not radical enough ; 
and none were so acceptable that it was not easy 
to form combinations for their defeat. All were 
agreed that the non-importation act must be got 
rid of ; but the difficulty was to find a way to be 
rid of it so that the nation should at once maintain 
its dignity, assert its rights, and escape a war. 
The President would have preferred that all Brit- 
ish and French ships be excluded from American 
ports, and that importations from both countries 
should be prohibited except in American vessels ; 
and a bill to this effect was one of several that was 
defeated in the course of the session. But at last, 
in May (1810), an act was passed excluding only 
the men-of-war of both nations, but suspending the 
non-importation act for three months after the ad- 
journment of Congress. The President was then 
authorized, when the three months were passed, to 
declare the act again in force against either Great 
Britain or France, should the commercial orders or 
decrees of either nation be continued in force while 
those of the other were repealed. 

If the aim of the dominant party had been to 
devise a scheme sure to lead to fresh complications 
more difficult to manage than any that had gone 
before, it could not have hit upon a better one 
than this. Hitherto, in all the perplexities and 
anxieties of the situation, the government had, 
at least, kept its relations to other powers in its 



MADISON AS PRESIDENT 281 

own hands, to conduct them, whether wisely or 
unwisely, in its own way. It could resent or sub- 
mit to encroachments upon the commerce of the 
country, as seemed most prudent ; it could close 
or open the ports, as seemed most judicious ; or it 
could join forces with that one of its two enemies 
whose alliance promised to secure respect on the 
one hand, and compel it on the other. But now 
it had tied itself up in a knot of provisos. It 
would do something if England would do some- 
thing else, or if France would do something else. 
If the proposition was accepted by England and 
was not accepted by France, then the United 
States would remain in friendly relations with 
England, and assume by comparison an unfriendly 
attitude toward France; and if France accepted 
the condition and England declined it, then the 
situation would be reversed. Nothing would be 
gained in either case that might not have been 
gained by direct negotiation, and, no doubt, on 
better terms. But if the proposition now offered 
should be disregarded by both powers, the situa- 
tion would be worse than before. This evidently 
was Madison's view of the question. He wrote to 
Pinkney, the minister at the Court of St. James, 
a month after the act was passed : " At the next 
meeting of Congress, it will be found, according 
to present appearances, that instead of an adjust- 
ment with either of the belligerents, there is an 
increasing obstinacy in both ; and that the incon- 
veniences of embargo and non-intercourse have 



282 JAMES MADISON 

been exchanged for the greater sacrifices, as well 
as disgrace, resulting from a submission to the 
predatory system in force." Not that he wanted 
war; his faith in passive resistance was still un- 
shaken ; embargo and non-intercourse he was still 
confident would, if persisted in long enough, surely 
bring the belligerents to terms. But as to this act, 
he weighs the chances as in a balance. In England 
some impression may be made by the prices of 
cotton and tobacco, — "cotton down at ten or eleven 
cents in Georgia; and the great mass of tobacco in 
the same situation." He has, however, no " very 
favorable expectations." But as to France, he evi- 
dently is not without hope that she will be wise 
enough to see that " she ought at once to embrace 
the arrangement held out by Congress, the renewal 
of a non-intercourse with Great Britain being the 
very species of resistance most analogous to her 
professed views." But he was clearly not san- 
guine. 

If that was his wish, however, it was gratified. 
Napoleon did take advantage of the act, but in 
such a way as to reverse the relative positions of 
the two nations by seizing for France and taking 
from the United States the power or the will to 
dictate terms. The French minister, Champagny, 
announced in a letter merely, in August, the revo- 
cation of the Berlin and Milan decrees from the 
1st of the following November ; and, a day or two 
after, such new restrictions were imposed upon 
American trade, by prohibitory duties and a navi- 



aiADISON AS PRESIDENT 283 

gation act, as pretty much to ruin what little there 
was left of it. The revocation of the edicts, more- 
over, was coupled with the conditions that Great 
Britain should not only recall her order in council, 
but renounce her " new principles of blockade," or 
that the United States should " cause their rights 
to be respected by the English." Napoleon had in 
this three ends to gain, and he gained them all : 
First, to secure France against a renewal of the 
non-importation act of the United States, if the 
President should accept this conditional recall of 
the decrees as satisfactory ; second, to leave those 
decrees virtually imrepealed, by making their recall 
depend upon the action of England, who, he well 
knew, would not listen to the proposed conditions ; 
and, third, to involve the United States and Eng- 
land in new disputes, which might lead to war. 
Everything turned out as the emperor wished. 
The President accepted the conditional withdrawal 
of the French decrees, as in accordance with the 
act of Congress ; England refused to recognize a 
contingent withdrawal as a withdrawal at all ; and 
the result at length was war between England and 
the United States. 

The acquiescence of the President in the decision 
of Napoleon was the more significant inasmuch 
as Mr. Smith, the secretary of state, had assured 
the French government, when a copy of the act 
of May was sent to it, that there could be no 
negotiation under the act until another matter was 
disposed of. A decree, issued at Rambouillet in 



284 JAMES MADISON 

March, 1810, and enforced in May, ordered the 
confiscation of all American ships then detained 
in the ports of France, and in Spanish, Dutch, 
and Neapolitan ports under the control of France. 
The loss to American merchants, including ships 
and cargoes, was estimated to be about forty 
million dollars. This decree was ostensibly in 
retaliation of that act of non-intercourse passed by 
Congress more than a year before, and was, there- 
fore, a retrospective law. The non - intercourse 
act, moreover, had expired by its own limitation 
months before many of these ships were seized ; 
but all, nevertheless, were confiscated, though 
some of them had entered the ports merely for 
shelter. By order of the President, Smith wrote 
to Armstrong, the American minister at Paris, 
that " a satisfactory provision for restoring the 
property lately surprised and seized, by the order 
or at the instance of the French government, must 
be combined with a repeal of the French edicts, 
with a view to a non-intercourse with Great Brit- 
ain ; such a provision being an indispensable evi- 
dence of the just purpose of France toward the 
United States." The injunction was repeated a 
few weeks later ; but when the emperor's decision 
upon the decrees was announced, in August, the 
" indispensable " was dispensed with, and a few 
months later an absolute refusal of any compen- 
sation for the spoliation under the Rambouillet 
decree was quietly submitted to. 

But meanwhile the President, in November, 



MADISON AS PRESIDENT 285 

issued a proclamation announcing that France had 
complied with the act of the previous May and 
revoked the decrees, while the English orders in 
council remained imrepealed. But England still 
had three months, according to the act, in which to 
make her choice between a recall of her orders in 
council or the alternative of seeing the American 
non-intercourse act revived against her. But, it is 
to be observed, the French minister's announce- 
ment of the acceptance of the act of May was not 
made till August, and then the revocation of the 
decrees was not to take effect till November. No- 
vember came bringing with it the President's pro- 
clamation, when it soon appeared that there was 
still to be " tarrying in the eating of the cake." 
The decrees were to remain in force at least three 
months longer, till it should be known whether 
Great Britain would comply with those terms which 
France — not the United States — made the con- 
dition of revoking the orders in council ; and if 
Great Britain did not comply, then the French 
decrees were not revoked. The legality of the 
President's proclamation, of course, was ques- 
tioned. There was, as Josiah Quincy said in de- 
bate in the House, the following February (1811), 
" a continued seizure of all the vessels which came 
within the grasp of the French custom-house, from 
the 1st of November down to the date of our last 
accounts." Other members, not more earnest, were 
less temperate in the expression of their indigna- 
tion at what, one of them said, would be called 



286 JAMES MADISON 

swindling in the conduct of private affairs ; while 
another declared that the President was throwing 
the people " into the embrace of that monster at 
whose perfidy Lucifer blushed and hell stands 
astonished." France knew all this while what 
England's decision would be. She was ready to 
rescind the orders in council when the French 
edicts were revoked, but she did not recognize a 
mere letter from the French minister, Champagny, 
to the American ambassador as such revocation. 
The second French condition, that England should 
abandon her " new principles of blockade " and 
accept in their place a new French principle, was 
peremptorily rejected by the English ministry. 
That proposition opened a question not properly 
belonging to an agreement touching the decrees 
and orders, — a question of what was a blockade, 
and what could properly be subject to it. Napo- 
leon's doctrine was, not only that a paper blockade 
was not permissible by the law of nations, but that 
there could be no right of blockade " to ports not 
fortified, to harbors and mouths of rivers, which, 
according to reason and the usage of civilized 
nations, is applicable only to strong or fortified 
places." Mr. Emott, a member of the House 
from New York, said in debate that the United 
States might well be grateful to both England and 
France, if they would agree upon this doctrine as 
good international law ; since in that case, as there 
were no fortified places in the United States, she 
would never be in peril of a blockade. But it was 



MADISON AS PRESIDENT 287 

precisely what England would not admit nor even 
discuss as relevant to an agreement to revoke the 
orders and decrees. 

To " this curious gallamatry," as Quincy called 
it, " of time present and time future, of doing and 
refraining to do, of declaration and understand- 
in «• of English duties and American duties," was 
added another ingredient of Madison's own devis- 
ing. The American ministers in England and 
France were instructed that Great Britain would 
be expected to include in the revocation of her 
orders in council the blockade of a portion of 
the coast of France, declared in May, 1806 ; and 
the President offered, unasked, a pledge to the 
French emperor, that this should be insisted upon. 
Whether he meant to make it easier for Napoleon 
and harder for Great Britain to respond to the act 
of May is a question impossible to answer; but 
the opponents of the policy he was pursuing were 
carefiAl to point out that the act of May said 
nothing whatever, either of this or any other block- 
ade ; that when, the year before, the agreement 
was made with Erskine, the President did not pre- 
tend that the orders in council included blockades ; 
and that it was remarkable that he should forget 
his own declaration regarding the monstrous spoli- 
ation of a few months before by the French, under 
the Rambouillet decree, and yet remember this 
British order of blockade of four years before, 
which everybody else had forgotten. Indeed, so 
completely had it passed out of mind, that the 



288 JAMES MADISON 

American minister in London, Mr. Pinkney, was 
obliged to ask the British foreign secretary whether 
that order had been revoked or was still considered 
as in force. It had never been formally with- 
drawn, was the answer, though it had been com- 
prehended in the subsequent order in council of 
January, 1807. England refused, however, to 
recall specifically this blockade of 1806, for that 
would have been construed as a recognition of 
Napoleon's right to demand an abandonment of 
her " new principles of blockade ; " but in fact — 
as the British minister in Washington afterward 
acknowledged — the recall of the order in council 
of 1807 would have annulled the order of blockade 
of 1806, which it had absorbed. 

The truth is, the whole negotiation was a trial 
of skill at diplomatic fence, in which England 
would not yield an inch to the United States or 
to France. Madison and his party were more than 
willing to aid Napoleon; and Napoleon hoped to 
defeat both his antagonists by turning their swords 
against each other. A quite different result would 
have followed had France been as willing as Eng- 
land apparently was that the commercial edicts 
should be considered without regard to other 
questions ; or if the American Executive had 
insisted that it would accept their unconditional 
revocation, pure and simple and not otherwise, 
from either power, as was contemplated in the act 
of May, 1810. But instead, when Congress rose 
in March, 1811, it left behind it an act renewing 



MADISON AS PRESIDENT 289 

non-intercourse with England, in accordance with 
Napoleon's demand that the United States should 
" cause their rights to be respected by the Eng- 
lish." This meant war. 



CHAPTER XIX 

WAR WITH ENGLAND 

In May, 1811, there occurred one of those acci- 
dents which happen on purpose, and often serve 
as a relief when the public temper is in an exas- 
perated and almost dangerous condition. This was 
the fight between the American frigate President, 
of forty-four guns, and the English sloop-of-war 
Little Belt, of eighteen guns. This vessel belonged 
to the British squadron which was ordered to the 
American coast to break up the trade from the 
United States to France ; and the President was 
one of the few ships the government had for the 
protection of its commerce. The ships met a few 
miles south of Sandy Hook, chased each other in 
turn, then fired into each other without any rea- 
sonable pretext for the first shot, which each ac- 
cused the other of having fired. The loss on board 
the English ship, in an encounter which lasted 
only a few minutes, was over thirty in killed and 
wounded, while only a single man was slightly 
wounded on board the President. It was, as Mr. 
Madison said, an " occurrence not unlikely to 
bring on repetitions," and that these would " prob- 
ably end in an open rupture or a better under- 



WAR WITH ENGLAND 291 

standing, as the calculations of the British govern- 
ment may prompt or dissuade from war." This 
certainly was obvious enough ; though it would be 
a great deal easier for England to bring on a war 
than to avert it, in the angry mood in which the 
majority of the Democratic party then was. But 
Mr. Madison preserved his equanimity. Consider- 
ing his old proclivity for France, and his old dislike 
of England, his impartiality between them is rather 
remarkable. But his aim was still to keep the 
peace while he abated nothing of the well-founded 
complaints he had against both powers. When a 
new Congress assembled in the autumn he was care- 
ful to point out in his message the delinquencies of 
France as well as the offenses of England. He 
insisted that while England should have acknow- 
ledged the Berlin and Milan decrees to be revoked 
and have acted accordingly, France showed no dis- 
position to repair the many wrongs she had inflicted 
upon American merchants, and had lately imposed 
such " rigorous and imexpected restrictions " upon 
commerce that it would be necessary, unless they 
were speedily discontinued, to meet them by 
"corresponding restrictions on importations from 
France." 

This tone is even more pronounced in his let- 
ters for some following months. If anything, it 
is France rather than England that seems to be 
looked upon as the chief offender, with whom there 
was the greater danger of armed collision. A fort- 
night after Congress had assembled he wi-ote to 



292 JAMES MADISON 

Barlow, the new minister to France, that though 
justified in assuming the French decrees to be so 
far withdrawn that a withdrawal of the British 
orders might be looked for, " yet the manner in 
which the French government has managed the 
repeal of the decrees, and evaded a correction of 
other outrages, has mingled with the conciliatory- 
tendency of the repeal as much of irritation and 
disgust as possible." " In fact," he adds, " with- 
out a systematic change from an appearance of 
crafty contrivance and insatiate cupidity, for an 
open, manly, and upright dealing with a nation 
whose example demands it, it is impossible that 
good-wiU can exist; and that the ill-will which 
her policy aims at directing against her enemy 
should not, by her folly and iniquity, be drawn 
off against herself." French depredations upon 
American commerce in the Baltic were " kindling 
a fresh flame here," and, if they were not stopped, 
" hostile collisions will as readily take place with 
one nation as the other ; " nor would there be any 
hesitation in sending American frigates to that sea, 
" with orders to suppress by force the French and 
Danish depredations," were it not for the " danger 
of rencounters with British ships of superior force 
in that quarter." 

By this time, however, Congress, under the lead 
of younger, vigorous men — chief among them 
Clay and Calhoun — panting for leadership and 
distinction, was beginning its clamor for war with 
England. How much respect had Madison for 



WAR WITH ENGLAND 293 

this movement, and how much faith in it? A 
letter to Jefferson of February 7 answers both 
questions. Were he not evidently amused, he 
would seem to be contemptuous. " To enable the 
Executive to step at once into Canada," he says, 
"they have provided, after two months' delay, 
for a regular force requiring twelve to raise it, 
and after three months for a volunteer force, on 
terms not likely to raise it at all for that object. 
The mixture of good and bad, avowed and dis- 
guised motives, accounting for these things, is curi- 
ous enough, but not to be explained in the compass 
of a letter." This is not the tone of either hope 
or fear. If war was in his mind at that time, it 
was not war with England. Three weeks later he 
writes to Barlow at Paris. On various points of 
negotiation between that minister and the French 
government, he observes much that " suggests dis- 
trust rather than expectation." He complains of 
delay, of vagueness, of neglect, of discourtesy, of 
a disregard of past obligations as to the libera- 
tion of ships and cargoes seized, and of late con- 
demnations of ships captured in the Baltic ; and 
concerning all these and other grievances he says : 
" "We find so little of explicit dealing or substan- 
tial redress mingled with the compliments and 
encouragements, which cost nothing because they 
mean nothing, that suspicions are unavoidable ; and 
if they be erroneous, the fault does not lie with 
those who entertain them." He believed that 
France, in asking for a new treaty, which he thinks 



294 JAMES MADISON 

unnecessary, is only seeking to gain time in order 
to take advantage of future events. The com- 
mercial relations between tke two countries are so 
intolerable that trade "will be prohibited if no 
essential change take place." Unless there be in- 
demnity for the great wrongs committed under the 
RambouiUet decree, and for other spoliations, he 
declares that " there can be neither cordiality nor 
confidence here; nor any restraint from self- 
redress in any justifiable mode of effecting it." 
The letter concludes with the emphatic assertion 
that, if dispatches soon looked for " do not exhibit 
the French government in better colors than it 
has yet assumed, there will be but one sentiment 
in this country; and I need not say what that 
will be." 

Congress all this while was lashing itself into 
fury against England. The ambitious young lead- 
ers of the Democratic party in the House were, 
so to speak, " spoiling for a fight," and they chose 
to have it out with England rather than with 
France. Not that there was not quite as much 
reason for resentment against France as against 
England. Some, indeed, of the more hot-headed 
were anxious for war with both ; but these were 
of the more impulsive kind, like Henry Clay, 
who laughed in scorn at the doubt that he could 
not at a blow subdue the Canadas with a few 
regiments of Kentucky militia. But war with 
England was determined upon, partly because 
the old enmity toward her made that intolerable 



WAE WITH ENGLAND 295 

which to the okl affection for France was a bur- 
den lightly borne ; and partly because the instinc- 
tive jealousy of the commercial interest, on the 
part of the planter-interest, preferred that policy 
which would do the most harm to the North. On 
April 1, 1812, just five weeks after the writing of 
this letter to Barlow, IVIr. Madison sent to Con- 
gress a message of five lines recommending the 
immediate passage of an act to impose " a general 
embargo on all vessels now in port or hereafter 
arriving for the period of sixty days." It was 
meant to be a secret measure ; but the intention 
leaked out in two or three places, and the news 
was hurried North by several of the Federalist 
members in time to enable some of their constitu- 
ents to send their ships to sea before the act was 
passed. Nor, probably, was it a surprise to any- 
body ; for war with England had been the topic of 
debate in one aspect or another all winter, and the 
purpose of the party in power was plain to every- 
body. That the embargo was intended as a pre- 
paration for war was frankly acknowledged. An 
act was speedily passed, though the period was 
extended from sixty to ninety days. Within less 
than sixty days, however, another message from 
the President recommended a declaration of war. 
On June 3 the Committee on Foreign Relations, 
of which Calhoun was chairman, reported in favor 
of " an immediate appeal to arms," and the next 
day a declaratory act was passed. Of the seventy- 
nine affirmative votes in the House, forty-eight 



296 JAMES MADISON 

were frdm the South and West, and of the other 
thirty-one votes from the Northern States, fourteen 
were from Pennsylvania alone. Of the forty-nine 
votes against it, thirty-four were from the Northern 
States, including two from Pennsylvania. On the 
17th, a fortnight later, the bill was got through 
the Senate by a majority of six. 

Mr. Madison for years had opposed a war with 
England as unwise and useless, — unwise, because 
the United States was not in a condition to go to 
war with the greatest naval power in the world ; 
and useless, because the end to be reached by war 
could be gained more certainly, and at infinitely 
less cost, by peaceful measures. The situation had 
not changed. Indeed, up to within a month of 
the message recommending an embargo as a pre- 
cursor of war, his letters show that, if he thought 
war was inevitable, it must be with France, not 
England. But the faction determined upon war 
must have at their command an administration to 
carry out that policy. Their choice was not lim- 
ited to Madison for an available candidate. Who- 
ever was nominated by the Democrats was sure 
to be chosen, and Madison had two formidable 
rivals in James Monroe, secretary of state, and De 
Witt Clinton, mayor of New York, both eager for 
war. The choice depended on that question and 
between the embargo message of April 1 and the 
war message of June 1, the nomination was given 
to Madison by the congressional caucus. It was 
understood, and openly asserted at the time by the 



WAR WITH ENGLAND 297 

opponents of the administration, that the nomina- 
tion was the price of a change of policy. At the 
next session of Congress, before a year had passed 
away, Mr. Quincy said in the House : " The great 
mistake of all those who reasoned concerning the 
war and the invasion of Canada, and concluded 
that it was impossible that either should be seri- 
ously intended, resulted from this, that they never 
took into consideration the connection of both 
those events with the great election for the chief 
magistracy which was then pending. It was never 
sufficiently considered by them that plunging into 
a war with Great Britain was among the conditions 
on which the support for the presidency was made 
dependent." The assertion, so plainly aimed at 
Madison, passed unchallenged, though the charge 
of any distinct bargain was vehemently denied. 

If Mr. Madison's conscience was not always 
vigorous enough to enable him to resist temptation, 
it was so sensitive as to prompt him to look for 
excuses for yielding. In a sense this was to his 
credit as one of the better sort of politicians, 
without assuming it to be akin to that hypocrisy 
which is the homage vice pays to virtue. Perhaps 
it was this sentiment which led him to accept so 
readily the pretended disclosures of John Henry, 
and to make the use of them he did. These were 
contained in twenty -four letters, for which the 
President, apparently without hesitation, paid fifty 
thousand dollars. On March 9 he sent them to 
Congress with a message, and on the same day, in 



298 JAMES MADISON 

a letter to Jefferson, alludes to them as " this 
discovery, or rather formal proof of the cooperar 
tion between the Eastern Junto and the British 
cabinet." In the message he intimates that this 
secret agent was sent directly by the British gov- 
ernment to Massachusetts to foment disaffection, to 
intrigue " with the disaffected for the purpose of 
bringing about resistance to the laws, and eventu- 
ally, in concert with a British force, of destroying 
the Union " and reannexing the Eastern States to 
England. In the war message of June 1 these 
charges are repeated as among the reasons for an 
appeal to arms. Mr. Calhoun's committee followed 
this lead and improved upon it in the report recom- 
mending an immediate declaration of war. The 
Henry affair was declared an " act of still greater 
malignity " than any of the other outrages against 
the United States of which Great Britain had been 
guilty, and that which " excited the greatest hor- 
ror." The incident was seized upon, apparently, 
to answer a temporary purpose, and then, so far as 
Mr. Madison was concerned, was permitted to sink 
into oblivion. In the hundreds of pages of his 
published letters, written in later life, in which he 
reviews and explains so many of the events of his 
public career, there is no allusion whatever to the 
Henry disclosures, which in 1812 were held, with 
the ruin of American commerce and the impress- 
ment of thousands of American citizens, as an 
equally just cause for war. In truth there was 
nothing whatever in these disclosui-es, for which 



WAR WITH ENGLAND 299 

was paid an amount equal to the salary of half a 
presidential term, to warrant the assumptions of 
either Mr. Madison's messages or Mr. Calhoun's 
report. The man had been sent, at his own sug- 
gestion, early in 1809, by the governor of Canada 
to Massachusetts to learn the state of affairs there 
and observe the drift of public opinion. His na- 
tional proclivity — he was an Irishman — to con- 
spiracy and revolution had led him to see in the 
dissatisfaction with the embargo a determination 
in the New England people to destroy the Union, 
reannex themselves to England, and return to the 
flesh-pots of the colonial period. To learn how 
far gone they were in these designs, to put liimself 
in intimate relations with the leading conspirators 
and to bring them into communication with Sir 
James Craig, the governor-general of Canada, that 
sufficient aid should come through him at the 
proper moment from the British government, was 
Henry's mission. Of this truly Irish plot Henry 
was the villain and Craig the fool ; but it is hardly 
possible that three years afterward Madison and 
his friends, with aU the letters spread before them, 
could really have been the dupes. 

Henry went to Boston and remained there about 
three months, living at a tavern. He found out 
nothing because there was nothing to be found 
out. He knew nobody, and nobody of any note 
knew him, and all the information he sent to Craig 
might have been, and doubtless was, picked up in 
the ordinary political gossip of the tavern bar- 



300 JAMES MADISON 

room, or culled from the columns of the news- 
papers of both parties. He compromised nobody, 
for — as Mr. Monroe, as secretary of state, testi- 
fied in a report to the Senate — he named no per- 
son or persons in the United States who had, 
"in any way or manner whatever, entered into 
or countenanced the project or views " of himself 
and Craig; and all he had to say was pointless 
and unimportant, except so far as his opinions 
misrht have some interest as those of a shrewd 
observer of public events. Indeed, his own con- 
clusion was that there was no conspiracy in the 
Eastern States ; that the Federal party was strong 
enough to keep the peace with England ; and that 
there was no talk of disunion, nor any likelihood of 
it unless it should be brought about by war. The 
correspondence itself showed, in a letter from 
Eobert Peel, then secretary to Lord Liverpool, 
that the letters of Henry were found, as a matter 
of course, among Canadian official papers, as they 
related to public affairs ; but they had either never 
attracted any attention or had been entirely for- 
gotten, and Lord Liverpool was quite ignorant of 
any " arrangement or agreement " that had been 
made between the governor of Canada and his 
emissary to New England. It was only because 
of his failure to get any reward from the British 
government or from Craig's successor in Canada, 
for what he was pleased to call his services, that 
the adventurer came to Washington in search of a 
market for himself and his papers. He came at 



WAR WITH ENGLAND 301 

an opportune moment. Notwithstanding the sec- 
retary of state frankly declared, that neither by 
writing nor by word of mouth did the man impli- 
cate by name anybody in the United States ; not- 
withstanding one of the letters was evidence, the 
more conclusive because incidental, that the Brit- 
*ish secretary of state had known nothing of this 
mission contrived between Henry and Craig, — yet 
Mr. Madison pronounced the letters to be the " for- 
mal proof of the cooperation between the Eastern 
Junto and the British cabinet." The charge was 
monstrous, for this pretended proof had no exist- 
ence. If the President, however, could persuade 
himself that the story was true, it would help him 
to justify himself to himself for a change of policy, 
the result of which would be the coveted renomi- 
nation for the presidency. 

Not that there had never been talk of disunion 
in New England. There had been in years past, 
as there was to be in years to come. But talk of 
that kind did not belong exclusively to that par- 
ticular period, nor was it confined to that particu- 
lar region of country. Ever since the adoption of 
the Constitution the one thing that orators. North 
and South, inside the halls of Congress and out- 
side them, were agreed upon was, that in all debate 
there was one argument, equally good on both 
sides, to which there could be no reply ; that in all 
legislation there was one possible supreme move 
that would bring all the wheels of government to 
a dead stop. The solemn warning or the angry 



302 JAMES MADISON 

threat was always in readiness for instant use, 
that the bonds of the Union, in one or another 
contingency, were to be rent asunder. But so 
frequent had been these warning cries of the com- 
ing wolf that they were listened to with indiffer- 
ence, except when some positive act indicated real 
danger, as in the Jefferson-Madison " resolutions 
of '98." It was easy, therefore, to alarm the pub- 
lic with confessions of a secret emissary, as he pre- 
tended, who had turned traitor to the government 
which had employed him and to the conspirators 
to whom he had been sent ; and the more repre- 
hensible was it, therefore, in a President of the 
United States, to make the use that was made of 
this story, which an impartial examination would 
have shown was essentially absurd and infamously 
false. Mr. Madison's intelligence is not to be 
impugned. He was too sagacious, as well as too 
unimpassioned a man, to be taken in by the ingen- 
ious tale of such an adventurer as Henry. In a 
letter to Colonel David Humphreys, written the 
next spring, in defense of the policy of commer- 
cial restrictions, he says : " I have never allowed 
myself to believe that the Union was in danger, or 
that a dissolution of it could be desired, unless by 
a few individuals, if such there be, in desperate 
situations or of unbridled passions." New Eng- 
land, he continues, " would be the greatest loser 
by such an event, and not likely therefore delib- 
erately to rush into it." " On what basis," he 
asks, " coidd New England and Old England form 



WAR WITH ENGLAND 303 

commercial stipulations ? " Their commercial jeal- 
ousy, he contends, forbade an alliance between 
them, for that was " the real source of our Revolu- 
tion." He closes with the significant assertion 
that, " if there be links of common interest between 
the two countries, they would connect the South- 
ern and not the Northern States with that part of 
Europe." How, then, could he seriously accept 
Henry's pretended disclosures as " formal proof," 
as he wrote to Jefferson at that time, " of the coop- 
eration between the Eastern Junto and the British 
cabinet " ? By the Eastern Junto is meant the 
Federal party, or at least the influential and able 
leaders of that party ; and he could not consider, 
nor would he have spoken of them as " a few indi- 
viduals, if such there be, in desperate situations 
or of unbridled passions." He accepted, then, the 
Henry story in spite of his deliberate opinions, as 
a help to involve the country in a party war. 

Even at the risk of some prolixity it is needful 
to follow the course of events that led to this war 
a little farther ; for here was the culmination of 
Mr. Madison's career, and from his course in shap- 
iner and directing these events we best learn what 
manner of man he was, and where his true place is 
among the public men of our earlier history. For 
a year and a half the United States had acted on 
the assumption that France had recalled her de- 
crees, and that England had not revoked her orders. 
The extracts from Mr. Madison's letters, given on 
previous pages, show his conviction that the revo- 



304 JAMES MADISON 

cation of either decrees or orders was practically 
no more true of one power than it was of the other. 
The government of the United States, nevertheless, 
submitted to the one, and against the other it first 
reenacted the non-intercourse act, then proclaimed 
an embargo preparatory to war, and finally declared 
war. Yet the whole world knew, and nobody so 
surely as the emperor of France, that the Berlin 
and Milan decrees had never been formally repealed 
at all ; meanwhile French outrages upon American 
commerce had continued, and all redress so per- 
sistently refused that, so late as the last week in 
February, 1812, the President intimated that war 
— war with France, not England — might prove 
the only remedy. But he suddenly yielded to the 
clamors of the war party at home, whatever may 
have been his motive. Then, and not till then, 
were the decrees actually revoked by Napoleon. 
In May, 1812, more than a month after the Presi- 
dent had recommended an embargo, the hostile 
purport of which was so well understood, a decree 
was proclaimed by the emperor which for the first 
time really revoked those of Berlin and Milan. 
True, it was dated — " purported to be dated," it 
was said in an official English document — April, 
1811. But that was of no moment ; the essential 
point was, that it had never seen the light ; that 
any hint of its existence had never been given to 
the American government, or its representatives 
abroad, till the United States had taken measures 
to " cause their rights to be respected by the Eng- 



WAR WITH ENGLAND 305 

lish," which was the original condition of a revoca- 
tion of the decrees. Its ostensible date was when 
the news reached France that non-intercourse had 
been again enforced against England in March, 
1811 ; but its promulgation was to all intents and 
purposes the real date, when news reached France, 
in April or May, 1812, that war against England 
was finally determined upon. 

The Duke of Bassano, the French minister, had 
not, moreover, brought out this year-old decree 
without pressure from the American minister. Bar- 
low. The President had written Barlow, in that 
February letter already quoted, that if his ex- 
pected dispatches did not " exhibit the conduct of 
the French government in better colors than it 
has yet assumed, there wiU be but one sentiment 
in this country, and I need not say what that will 
be." When the dispatches came, Mr. Madison 
received no assurances of redress for past wrongs 
and no promises for the future ; but he learned, on 
the contrary, that Bassano, in a recent report to 
the emperor, had referred to the decrees of Berlin 
and Milan as still in force against all neutral na- 
tions which submitted to the seizure of their ships 
by the British when containing contraband goods 
or enemy's property. Natm-ally the British minis- 
try was not slow in presenting this precious acknow- 
ledgment to the United States as a proof that she 
had aU along been in the ^vrong, and that in com- 
mon justice to England the non-importation act 
should now be repealed. The assurance was at the 



306 JAMES MADISON 

same time repeated, possibly in a tone of consider- 
able satisfaction, that when Napoleon really should 
revoke his decrees Great Britain was ready, as she 
always had been, to follow his example with her 
orders. It was an awkward dilemma for the Pre- 
sident and his minister to France. But by this 
time, the Presidential nomination impending, Mr. 
Madison had made up his mind what to do. He 
was not exactly a wolf; neither was Great Britain 
a lamb ; but the argument he used was the argu- 
ment of the fable. Instead of advising — Bassano 
having declared the decrees still in force — a 
repeal of the non-importation act, as Great Britain 
claimed was in justice and comity her due, he re- 
commended a war measure. But Barlow evidently 
felt himself to be under some decent restraint of 
logic and consistency. He urged upon the French 
minister the necessity now of a positive and impe- 
rial declaration that the decrees, so far as regarded 
the United States, were absolutely revoked ; for 
this recent assertion of Bassano, that they were stiU 
in force, jjut the United States in an attitude both 
towards France and England utterly and absurdly 
in the wrong. Barlow represented that, should the 
revocation be extended only to the United States, 
Great Britain would not for that alone repeal her 
orders. In that case France would lose nothing 
of the advantage of her present position, while 
everything would be lost should the United States 
be compelled to repeal her non-importation laws 
against England. Bassano was quick to see the 



WAR WITH ENGLAND 307 

necessity of jumping into the bramble-bush and 
scratching his eyes in again, and he then produced 
his year-old edict. Being a year old, it of course 
covered all questions. But was it a year old ? Who 
knew? It had never been published? No, the duke 
said ; but it had been shown to Mr. Jonathan Rus- 
sell, who at that time was charge d'affaires at Paris. 
Mr. Russell denied it, though a denial was hardly 
needed. He would not have ventured to withhold 
information so important from his government; 
and it was evident, from the tone of his dispatches 
of a subsequent date, that he had no suspicion of 
its existence. For he had maintained it, as a point 
of " national honor," that the revocation of the 
French decrees must have preceded the President's 
proclamation of November 1, 1810 ; and this he 
would not have dared to do had he known that the 
actual revocation by the French minister was not 
made till six months after the date of the Presi- 
dent's proclamation, and was then made secretly. 

However, as if to defeat all these machinations 
of France and the United States, Great Britain 
immediately recalled her orders in council, when, 
in May, 1812, the Duke of Bassano announced 
the edict of April, 1811, revoking the Berlin and 
Milan decrees, though so far only as they con- 
cerned American vessels. The declaration of war 
of June 18 had not reached England, and there was 
still a chance for peace. Foster, the late English 
minister to the United States, learned at Halifax — 
where he had stopped on his way home — that 



308 JAMES MADISON 

the orders in council were repealed, and he took 
immediate steps to bring about an armistice be- 
tween the naval commanders on the coast of Nova 
Scotia, and between the governor of Canada and 
the American general, Dearborn, in command of 
the frontier. The government at Washington, how- 
ever, refused to ratify any suspension of hostilities. 
Some negotiations followed, but, decrees and orders 
being out of the way, there was nothing left to 
negotiate about except the question of impressment. 
Upon that question the two governments were as 
wide apart as ever, and not in the least likely to 
come together. Mr. Madison determined that on 
that ground alone the war should go on. It had 
been as good and sufficient ground for such a war 
any time for the past dozen years ; but whether it 
could be settled by an appeal to arms was a ques- 
tion of possibilities and probabilities by which both 
Jefferson and Madison had hitherto been ruled. 
Was that still the essential question ? With the 
residt came the answer. Two years later the ad- 
ministration was glad to accept a treaty of peace 
in which impressment was not even alluded to. 
Great Britain did not relinquish by a syllable her 
assumed right to board American ships in search of 
British seamen ; and the administration instructed 
its peace commissioners not even to ask that she 
should. 



CHAPTER XX 

CONCLUSION 

Early in the war Mr. Madison said to a friend, 
in a letter " altogether private and written in con- 
fidence," that the way to make the conflict both 
" short and successful would be to convince the 
enemy that he was to contend with the whole and 
not part of the nation." That it was a war of a 
party, and not of the people, was a discouragement 
to himself, however the enemy may have regarded 
it, which he could never see any way of overcom- 
ing. He could not listen to an opponent nor learn 
anything from disaster. " If the war must con- 
tinue," said Webster within a year of its end, 
" go to the ocean. Let it no longer be said that 
not one ship of force, built by your hands since 
the war, yet floats. If you are seriously contend- 
ing for maritime rights, go to the theatre where 
those rights can be defended. . . . There the 
united wishes and exertions of the nation will go 
with you. Even our party divisions, acrimonious 
as they are, cease at the water's edge. ... In 
protecting naval interests by naval means, you 
will arm yourself with the whole power of na- 
tional sentiment, and may command the whole 



V 



310 JAMES MADISON ' 

i 

abundance of national forces." Taking now in i 
one view the events of those years, it is easy to ' 
see in our generation how mad were Madison and ; 
his party to turn deaf ears to such considerations | 
as these. Their force and wisdom had already been | 
proved by eighteen months of disaster on land, i 
which had made the war daily more and more un- i 
popular ; and by brilliant success for a time at sea, j 
when each fresh victory was hailed with universal j 
enthusiasm. " Our little naval triumphs," was the \ 
President's way of speaking of the latter ; and the 
only importance he seems to have seen in them 
was, that they excited some " rage and jealousy " in j 
England and moved her to increase her naval force. | 
How could Mr. Madison expect that the whole and \ 
not a part only of the nation coiUd uphold an ad- | 
ministration which, after eighteen months of fight- \ 
ing, could be reproached on the floor of Congress ] 
with not having launched a ship since the war was 
begun ? Or did he only choose to remember that j 
the navy, which alone so far had brought either 
success or honor to the national arms, was the ere- \ 
ation of the Federalists in spite of the Jeffersonian 
policy ? It surely would have been wiser to try to 
propitiate New England, with which he was in per- 
petual worry and conflict, by enlisting it in a naval | 
war in which it had some faith. A large propor- 
tion of her people would have been glad to escape 
idleness and poverty at home for service at sea, 
though they were reluctant to aid in a vain attempt 
to conquer Canada. 



>4 



CONCLUSION 311 

Even to that purpose, however, Massachusetts 
contributed, in the second campaign of 1814, more 
recruits than any other single State ; and New Eng- 
land more than all the Southern States together. 
New England could have given no stronger proof 
of her loyalty, if only Mr. Madison had known 
how to turn it to advantage. He was absolutely 
deaf and blind to it ; but his ears were quick to 
hear and his eyes to see, when he learned pre- 
sently that the New Englanders were seriously cal- 
culating the value of the Union under such rule 
as they had had of late. It was not often that he 
relieved himself by intemperate language, but he 
could not help saying now, in writing to Governor 
Nicholas of Virginia, that " the greater part of the 
people in that quarter have been brought by their 
leaders, aided by their priests, under a delusion 
scarcely exceeded by that recorded in the period 
of witchcraft ; and the leaders themselves are be- 
coming daily more desperate in the use they make 
of it." The " delusion " was taking a practical 
direction. Mr. Madison had learned before the 
letter was written that a convention was about to 
meet at Hartford, the object of which was to weigh 
in a balance, upon the one side, the continuation of 
such government as that of the last two or three 
years, and, upon the other side, the value of the 
Union. lie ardently hoped that the commission- 
ers, then assembled at Ghent, would agree upon a 
treaty; and there seemed to be no good reason 
why there should not be peace when nothing was 



312 JAMES MADISON 

to be said of the cause of the war, no apology 
demanded for the past, and no stipulation for the 
future. But if by any chance the commissioners 
should fail, Mr. Madison saw in the Hartford Con- 
vention the huge shadow of a coming conflict more 
difficult to deal with than a foreign war. It was 
the first step in dead earnest for the formation of 
a Northern Confederacy, and it is quite possible 
he may have felt that he was not the man for such 
a crisis. Every line of the letter pulsates with 
anxiety. The only consoling thought in it is that 
without " foreign cooperation revolt and separa- 
tion will hardly be risked," and to such coopera- 
tion he hoped a majority of the New England 
people would not consent. A treaty of peace, how- 
ever, came to save him and the Union. Within 
a few weeks the administration papers were laugh- 
ing at Harrison Gray Otis of Boston, who had 
started for Washington as the representative of 
the Hartford Convention, but turned back at the 
news of peace ; and were advertising him as 
missing under the name of Titus Gates. It was, 
however, the hysterical laugh of recovery from a 
terrible fright. 

If ambition to be a second time President led 
Mr. Madison to consent against his own better 
judgment to a war with England, he paid a heavy 
penalty. It was the act of a party politician and 
not of a statesman ; for the country was no more 
prepared for a war in 1812, when as a politician 
he assented to it, than it had been for the previous 



CONCLUSION 313 

half dozen years when as a statesman he had 
opposed it. He gave the influence of the United 
States in support of a despotism that aimed at 
the subjugation of all Europe ; he threw a fresh 
obstacle in the way of that power to which Europe 
could chiefly look to resist a common enemy ; and 
he did both under the pretense that the just com- 
plaints of the United States were greater against 
one of these powers than against the other. lie 
declared war mainly to redress a wrong which 
ceased to exist before a blow was struck ; he then 
rejected an offer of peace because another wrong 
was still persisted in ; but finally, of his own mo- 
tion, he accepted a treaty in which the assumed 
cause of war was not even alluded to. 

That Mr. Madison was not a good war Presi- 
dent, either by training or by temperament, was, 
if it may be said of any man, his misfortune rather 
than his fault. But it was his faidt rather than 
his misfortune that he permitted himseK to be 
dragged in a day into a line of conduct which the 
sober judgment of years had disapproved. He 
is usually and most justly regarded as a man of 
great amiability of character ; of unquestionable 
integrity in all the purely personal relations of 
life ; of more than ordinary intellectual ability 
of a solid, though not brilliant, quality ; and a 
diligent student of the science of government, the 
practice of which he made a profession. But he 
was better fitted by nature for a legislator than 
for executive office, and his fame would have been 



314 JAMES MADISON 

more spotless, tliough his position would have been 
less exalted, had his life been exclusively devoted 
to that branch of government for which he was 
best fitted. It was not merely that for the sake 
of the Presidency he plunged the country into an 
unnecessary war ; but when it was on his hands he 
neither knew what to do with it himself nor how to 
choose the right men who did know. 

It is our amiable weakness — if one may ven- 
ture to say so of the American people — that all 
our geese are swans, or rather eagles ; that we are 
apt to mistake notoriety for reputation ; that it is 
the popular belief of the larger number that he 
who, no matter how, has reached a distinguished 
position, is by virtue of that fact a great and good 
man. This is not less true, in a measure, of Mr. 
Madison than of some other men who have been 
Presidents, and of still more who have thought 
that they deserved to be. But, if that false esti- 
mate surrounds his name, there is a strong under- 
current of opinion, common among those whose 
business or whose pleasure it is to look beneath 
the surface of things historical, that he was want- 
ing in strength of character and in courage. He 
did not lack discernment as to what was wisest and 
best ; but he was too easily influenced by others, or 
led by the hope of gaining some glittering prize 
which ambition coveted, to turn his back upon 
his own convictions. It was this weakness which 
swept him beyond his depth into troubled waters 
where his struggles were hopeless. Had he refused 



CONCLUSION 315 

to assume the responsibility of a war which his 
judgment condemned, and which he should have 
known that he wanted the peculiar ability to bring 
to a successful and honorable conclusion, he might 
never have been President, but his fame would 
have been of a higher order. History might 
have overlooked the act of political fickleness in 
his earlier career, which was so warmly resented 
by many of his contemporaries. Abandonment 
of party is too common and often too justifiable 
to be accounted as necessarily a crime ; and it 
can rarely be said with positiveness, whatever the 
probabilities, that a political deserter is certainly 
moved by base motives. It is rather from ex x>ost 
facto than from immediate evidence, as in Madi- 
son's case, that a just verdict is likely to be 
reached. But there can be neither doubt nor mis- 
take as to the President's management of foreign 
affairs during the two years preceding the declara- 
tion of war against England ; nor of the remark- 
able incompetence which he showed in rallying the 
moral and material forces of the nation to meet an 
emergency of his own creation. 

Opposition to war generally and therefore op- 
position to an army and navy were sound cardinal 
principles in the Jeffersonian school of politics. 
Mr. Madison was curiously blind to the logical 
consequences of this doctrine ; he could not see, 
or he would not consider, that, when war seemed 
advisable to an administration, the result must 
depend mainly upon the success of the appeal to 



316 JAMES MADISON 

the people for their countenance and help. But he 
unwisely sought to raise and employ an army for 
the invasion and conquest of the territory of the 
enemy in spite of the opposition of a large propor- 
tion of the wealthiest and most intelligent people 
in the country ; while at the same time he refused 
to see any promise or any presage in a naval war- 
fare which had opened with unexpected brilliancy, 
and would, had it been followed up, have been 
sure of popular support. His title to fame rests, 
with the multitude, upon the fact that he was one 
of the earlier Presidents of the republic. But it 
is that period of his career which least entitles him 
to be remembered with gratitude and respect by 
his countrymen. 

Its crowning humiliation came with the capture 
of Washington in August, 1814, when the British 
admiral, Cockburn, entered the Hall of Represent- 
atives, at the head of a band of followers, and 
springing into the speaker's chair shouted : " Shall 
this harbor of Yankee Democracy be burned? 
All for it will say, Aye ! " Early in the war 
Madison had written to Jefferson, " We do not 
apprehend invasion by land," — the one thing, it 
would seem, that a commander-in-chief should 
have apprehended, whose single aim was the in- 
vasion and conquest of the enemy's territory. 
His devotion to this one purpose, to the exclu- 
sion of any other idea of either offense or defense, 
and in spite of continued failure, was almost an 
infatuation. Within a year of that expression of 



CONCLUSION 317 

confidence to Mr. Jefferson the whole coast was 
blockaded from the eastern end of Long Island 
Sound to the mouth of the Mississippi. For a 
year before Washington was taken, the shores of 
Chesapeake Bay were harassed and raided and 
devastated by a blockading force, till the people 
were reduced almost to the condition of a con- 
quered country. Two months before the British 
commanders, Ross and Cockburn, went up the 
Potomac, Mr. Gallatin, who was then in London, 
had informed the President that the fleet was to be 
reinforced for that very purpose ; but neither he 
nor Congress took any effective measures to meet 
a danger so imminent. Their eyes were fixed 
with a far-off gaze across the Northern border, 
while only five hundred regular troops, a body 
of untrained militia who had never heard the 
whistle of a bullet, and a few gunboats on the 
Potomac, guarded the national capital against a 
British fleet, a thousand marines, and thirty-five 
hundred nen from Wellington's best regiments. 
The President fleeing in one direction with the 
secretary of war, the secretary of state, and the 
general in command ; Mrs. Madison fleeing in 
another, with her reticule filled with silver spoons 
snatched up in haste as she left the AVhite 
House ; ^ behind them all as they fled, the horizon 

^ Paul Jennings, who was a slave and the body servant of Mr. 
Madison, says in his Reminiscences : " It has often been stated in 
print, that when Mrs. Madison escaped from the White House, she 
cut out from tlie frame the larjje portrait of Washingfton (now in 
one of the parlors there) and carried it off. This is totally false. 



318 JAMES MADISON 

red with the blaze of the largest navy yard in the 
country and of all the public buildings, but one, of 
the capital, — these incidents are an amazing com- 
mentary on the early assertion that invasion was 
not to be apprehended. 

The end of this wretched war, which has been 
foolishly called the second war of independence, 
came four months afterward. Never was a peace 
so welcome as this was on all sides. England was 
exhausted with the long contest with Napoleon; 
and now, that being over, as there was no practical 
question to differ about with the United States, 
the ministry were not unwilling to listen to the 
demands of the commercial and manufacturing 
classes. In America so great was the universal 
joy that the Federalists and the Democrats for- 
got their differences and their hates, and wept 
and laughed by turns in each other's arms and 
kissed each other like women. One party was de- 
livered from calamities for which, if continued 

She had no time for doing it. It would have required a ladder to 
get it down. All she carried off was the silver in her reticule, as 
the British were thought to be but a few squares off, and were 
expected every moment. John Suse (a Frenchman, then door- 
keeper, and still [1865] living), and Magraw, the President's 
gardener, took it down and sent it off on a wagon, with some 
large silver urns and such other valuables as could hastily be got 
hold of. When the British did arrive, they ate up the very 
dinner, and drank the wines, etc., that I had prepared for the 
President's party." On a previous page he had related that: 
" Mrs. Madison ordered dinner to be ready at three as usual ; I 
set the table myself, and brought up the ale, cider, and wine, and 
placed them in the coolers, as all the cabinet and several military 
gentlemen and strangers were expected." 



CONCLUSION 319 

much longer, there seemed only one desperate and 
dreaded remedy ; the other was overjoyed to back 
out of a blunder which was the straight and broad 
road to national ruin. Of all men, Mr. INIadison 
had the most reason to be glad for a safe deliver- 
ance from the consequences of his own want of 
foresight and want of firmness. Less than two 
years remained to him of his public career. In 
that brief period much was forgotten and more 
forgiven — as our national way is — in the pro- 
mise of a great prosperity to be speedily achieved 
in the released energies of a vigorous and industri- 
ous people. He had not again to choose between 
differing factions of his own party, nor to carry 
out a policy against the will of a formidable oppo- 
sition. To the Federalists hardly a name was left 
in the progress of events at home and abroad; 
while all inmiediate vital questions of difference 
vanished, the party in power remained in ahnost 
undisputed ascendency. The most important De- 
mocratic measures it then insisted upon were a 
national bank and a protective tariff. To the 
establishment of a bank Mr. Madison assented 
against his own conviction that any provision 
could be found for it in the Constitution ; and a 
tariff, both for revenue and for the protection and 
encouragement of American industry, he agreed 
with his party was the true policy. 

For nearly twenty years after his retirement to 
Montpellier — a name which, with rare exceptions, 
he always spelled coi-rectly, and not in the Ameri- 



320 JAMES MADISON 

can way — it was his privilege to live a watchful 
observer of the prosperity of his country. If it 
ever occurred to him in his secret soul that at the 
period of his preeminence he had done anything to 
arrest that prosperity, he gave no sign. He loved 
rather to remember and sometimes to recall to 
others the part he had taken in the nurture of the 
young republic in the feeble days of its infancy. 
Of his own administration and the events of that 
time he had much less to say than of the true 
interpretation of the Constitution, of the intent of 
its framers, and the circumstances that influenced 
their deliberations. His voluminous correspond- 
ence shows the bent of his mind as a legislator and 
a student of fundamental law ; and on that, rather 
than on his ability and success as the chief magis- 
trate of the nation, rests his true fame. 

These twenty years, though passed in retire- 
ment, were not years of leisure. " I have rarely," 
he wrote in 1827, " during the period of my public 
life, found my time less at my disposal than since 
I took my leave of it ; nor have I the consolation 
of finding, that as my powers of application neces- 
sarily decline, the demands on them proportionally 
decrease." Much as he wrote upon questions of 
an earlier period, there were no topics of the cur- 
rent time that did not arouse his interest. Upon 
the subject of slavery he thought much and wrote 
much and always earnestly and humanely. How 
to get rid of it was a problem which he never 
solved to his own satisfaction. Though it was one 



CONCLUSION 321 

he always longed to see thi'ough, it never occurred 
to him that the way to abolish slavery was — to 
abolish it. How kind he was as a master, Paul 
Jennings bears witness. " I never," he says, " saw 
him in a passion, and never knew him to strike 
a slave, though he had over a hundred ; neither 
would he allow an overseer to do it." He re- 
buked those who were in fault ; but, adds Jen- 
nings, he would " never mortify them by doing it 
before others." It will be remembered that on the 
first occasion of his being a candidate for public 
office he refused to follow the universal Viraiuian 
habit of " treating " the electors. To the principle 
which governed him then he adhered through life, 
and his letters show the warm interest he always 
took in every phase of the temperance movement. 
" I don't think he drank a quart of brandy in 
his whole life," says Jennings. A single glass of 
wine was all he ever took at dinner, and this he 
diluted with water, when, says the same witness, 
" he had hard drinkers at his table who had put 
away his choice madeira pretty freely." This 
will go for something, considering the times, with 
even the most zealous of the modern supporters 
of that cause ; but they must be quite satisfied 
to know that " for the last fifteen years of his life 
he drank no wine at all." Consideration for his 
own health, always feeble, may have led him to 
this abstinence ; but it is rather remarkable that a 
man of his position should have held, fifty years 
ago, the advanced notions which he certainly did 



322 JAMES MADISON 

upon this question, and that the doubt only of 
the possibility of enforcing laws for prohibiting 
the manufacture and sale of spirits seems to have 
withheld him from proposing them. 

Social as well as moral questions he discussed 
with evident interest and without passion or pre- 
judice. Aside from the party meaning of the term, 
he belonged to that school of democracy, now 
extinct, which believed that the highest object of 
human exertion is to improve man's condition, and 
to secure to each the rights which belong to all. 
He did not agree with Robert Owen as to meth- 
ods ; but neither did he reject his schemes as inev- 
itably absurd because they were new and imtried. 
One would not gather from his correspondence 
with Frances Wrio-ht that this was the notorious 
Fanny Wright whom the world chose to consider, 
as its way is, a disreputable and probably wicked 
woman, inasmuch as she proposed some radical 
changes in its social relations which she thought 
would be a gain. He gave much attention to 
popular education, and all the influence he could 
command was devoted, through all the later years 
of his life, to the establishment and well-being of 
the University of Virginia. Education, he main- 
tained, was the true foundation of civil liberty, and 
on it, therefore, rested the welfare and stability of 
the republic. It is probable that he would have 
drawn a line at difference of color then, simply 
because of the difference of condition implied by 
color. But he made no such distinction in sex. 



CONCLUSION 323 

Sixty-three years ago lie saw his way quite clearly 
on a question which is a sore trial now to many 
timid souls. The capacity of " the female mind " 
for the highest education cannot, he said, " be 
doubted, having been sufficiently illustrated by its 
works of genius, of erudition, and of science." 
The capacity, he assumed, carried with it the 
right. In short, he was ready always to consider 
fairly questions relating to the well-being of society 
which since his time have deeply agitated the 
country ; and he approached them all much m the 
spirit of the reformer who hopes to leave the world 
a little better and happier because he has lived 
in it. 

"Mr. Madison, I think," says Paul Jennings, 
" was one of the best men that ever lived." This 
is the testimony of an intelligent man whose oppor- 
tunities of knowing the personal qualities of him 
of whom he was speaking were more intimate than 
those of any other person could be except Mrs. 
Madison. "He was guilty," says Hildreth, "of 
the greatest political wrong and crime which it is 
possible for the head of a nation to commit." One 
saw the private gentleman, always conscientious 
and considerate in his personal relations to other 
men ; the other judged the public man, moved by 
ambition, entangled in party ties and supposed 
party obligations, his moral sense blinded by the 
necessities of political compromises to reach party 
ends. It is not impossible to strike a just balance 
between these opposing estimates, though one is 



324 JAMES MADISON 

that of a servant, the other that of a learned and 
judicious historian. 

Mr. Madison left a legacy of "Advice to My 
Country," to be read after his death and to " be 
considered as issuing from the tomb, where truth 
alone can be respected, and the happiness of man 
alone consulted." It is the lesson of his life, as 
he wished his countrymen to understand it. " The 
advice," he said, " nearest to my heart and deepest 
lL in my convictions is, that the Union of the States 

be cherished and perpetuated. Let the open en- 
emy to it be regarded as a Pandora with her box 
opened, and the disguised one as the serpent creep- 
ing with his deadly wiles into Paradise." The 
thoughtful reader, as he turns to the first page of 
this volume to recall the date of Mr. Madison's 
death, will hardly fail to note how few the years 
were before these open and disguised enemies, 
against whom he warned his countrymen, were 
found only in that party which he had done so 
much, from the time of the adoption of the Consti- 
tution, to keep in power. 






yi,■\'■^^■'■^ ,t.v- f^-v^vw-v-'*'* 



3 



INDEX 



t, 



i, 



4 



INDEX 



Abolition Societibs, petition for pro- 
hibition of African slave trade to 
Louisiana, 250. 

Adams, Jolin, refers question of 
Presidential titles to Congress, 123 ; 
his position in the matter, 123, 
124, 125 ; has popular sj-mpathy in 
X Y Z affair, 231 ; not a leader of a 
party, 231 ; his quarrel with party 
leaders, 240; effects of his foreign 
policy, 242. 

Adams, John Quincy, erroneous 
statement regarding date of Mad- 
ison's death, 1-3 ; attempt to expel 
from Congress, 1S5; on good luck 
of Jefferson, 244, 253 ; supports 
Jefferson's embargo policy, 245. 

Alien and Sedition Acts, passed in 
1798, 231; their justification, 231, 
232 ; influence election of 1800, 
240. 

Ames, Fisher, opposes impost on mo- 
lasses, 127 ; on proposal to tax im- 
ported slaves, 130 ; his doubts of any 
future development of West, 140 ; 
on banks, 1G2 ; on over-devotion to 
Constitution, 173 n. ; on Madison's 
partisanship, 102. 

Annapolis Convention, events leading 
up to, 52-59; proposed by Mary- 
land, 55, 59 ; meets with delegates 
from five States, .TO ; calls a conven- 
tion of all the States to revise Con- 
stitution, 59, GO; its meeting due 
to Madison, 61. 

Armstrong, John, on impotence of 
embargo, 209 ; instructed to de- 
mand compensation for French spo- 
liation, 284. 

Bainbkidge, Captain William, in 

war with Tripoli, 252. 
Bank, United States, debated in Con- 



gress, 162 ; arguments for and 
against, 1G2, 163 ; favored by House, 
163 ; discussion concerning, in cab- 
inet, 1113 ; bill creating, signed by 
Washington, 163 ; Madison's hostil- 
ity to, 177, 178 ; act creating, signed 
by Madison as President, 319. 
Barbary States, war with, during Jef- 
ferson's administration, 252. 
Barlow, Joel, letters of Madison to, 
as minister to France, 292, 293, 294 ; 
instructed by Madison to insist on 
explanations, 305; urges Bassano 
for a definite statement as to de- 
crees, 306. 
Barron, Commodore Samuel, in war 
with Tripoli, 252 ; in the Chesa- 
peake-Leopard affair, 265. 
Bassano, Duke de, shows antedated 
revocation of Berlin and Milan de- 
crees to Barlow, 305-307 ; his rea- 
sons, 307. 
Bayonne decree, 270. 
Berlin decree, issued, 266 ; negotia- 
tions concerning, 266-307. See 
France. 
Bonaparte, Napoleon, effect of his 
career on United States, 242 ; sells 
Louisiana to United States, 249 ; 
promulgates Berlin decree, 2G6 ; the 
Milan decree, 268; the Bayonne 
decree, 270 ; causes conditional re- 
vocation of decrees, 2S2 ; his policy 
and its success, 283 ; issues Ram- 
bouillet decree, 284; refuses com- 
pensation, 284 ; his doctrine of 
blockade, 286, 288 ; willingness of 
Madison to help, 288; succeeds in 
forcing United States to declare 
war on England, 288, 289 ; revokes 
decrees, 304. 
Bradford, William, Jr., letter of 
Madison to, 11, 13, 26. 



328 



INDEX 



Breckenridge, John, offers Kentucky 

Resolutions of 1799, 239. 
Brown, John, on advantages of slave 

trade for North, 130 n. 
Burr, Aaron, interview of Jefferson 

and Madison with, 175. 
Butler, Pierce, moves fugitive slave 

clause in Constitutional Convention, 

107. 

CALHOtTN, John C, leads war party in 
Congress, 292 ; reports from Com- 
mittee on Foreign Relations in favor 
of war, 295 ; denounces Henry af- 
fair, 298. 

Canada, its conquest looked forward 
to by war party, 293, 294, 310 ; re- 
luctance of New England to invade, 
310. 

Canning, George, sends instructions 
to Erskine, 273 ; his directions not 
obeyed, 274 ; repudiates Erskine's 
acts and recalls him, 275 ; bitter 
comments of Madison upon, 276 ; 
not really responsible for failure 
of negotiations, 27G, 277. 

Capital, discussion of its site, 139- 
143 ; settlement of question con- 
cerning, by Jefferson's and Hamil- 
ton's bargain, 143, 151, 152. 

Carrying trade acquired by United 
States during Napoleonic wars, 254- 
256. 

Champagny, announces conditional 
revocation of Berlin and Milan de- 
crees, 282. 

Chesapeake and Leopard affair, 264- 
266, 274. 

Clay, Henry, leads war party in Con- 
gress, 292, 294 ; expects easy con- 
quest of Canada, 294. 

Clinton, De Witt, interview of Jeffer- 
son and Madison with, 175 ; desires 
presidential nomination as candi- 
date of war party, 296. 

Clinton, George, candidate for presi- 
dential nomination, 272. 

Cockburn, Admiral George, bums 
capital at Washington, 316, 317. 

Confederation, Articles of, their use- 
lessness according to Hamilton, 36 ; 
require taxation in proportion to 
land, 37 ; proposal to amend by 



substituting population, 38 ; unable 
to create commercial union, 51, 52; 
military inefficiency of, shown by 
Shays's rebellion, 73 ; proposal of 
Jay to disregard, in making Span- 
isli treaty, 79, 80 ; desire of one 
party in Constitutional Convention 
to retain, 85, 86. 

Congress, Continental, Impotence of, 
in 1780, 20 ; financial powerlessness 
of, 21, 22, 29 ; draws bills on France 
without waiting for its reply to de- 
mand for loan, 28 ; in danger from 
army, 29 ; membership of, 30 ; in- 
structs Jay to insist on Mississippi 
navigation, 31 ; reverses instruc- 
tions, 32 ; again changes to origi- 
nal position, 33 ; proposes impost 
scheme to States, 33 ; proposes five 
per cent, scheme, 33 ; appoints 
committee to conciliate Rhode Is- 
land, 34 ; proposes amendment to 
Articles of Confederation, 37 ; 
adopts compromise concerning rate 
of taxing slaves, 41 ; alarmed at 
Shays's rebellion, 73 ; raises troops 
against, under pretext of attack- 
ing Indians, 73 ; discusses proposal 
to abandon Mississippi navigation 
in return for commercial treaty 
with Spain, 78 ; autliorizes Jay to 
make treaty, 79 ; later retracts con- 
sent to abandon navigation, 80 ; 
prohibits slavery in Northwest Or- 
dinance, 91, 92 ; provides for inau- 
guration of government under fed- 
eral Constitution, 116, 122. 

Congress of the United States, its 
slowness to assemble, 122, 123 ; de- 
bates question of presidential titles, 
123-126 ; disagreement in, between 
Senate and House, 124 ; debates 
impost and tonnage duties, 126- 
136 ; debate in, over proposal to 
tax imported slaves, 128-133 ; argu- 
ments in, against the tax, 130, 131 ; 
regrets proposal, 132 ; imposes mod- 
erate duties, 133 ; adopts policy of 
free trade in slaves, 133 and n. ; lays 
differential tonnage duties, 134- 
136 ; leadership of Madison in, 136, 
137 ; passing bills organizing gov- 
ernment, 137 ; debates question of 



INDEX 



329 



removals from office, 137, 13? ; pro- ' 
poses amendments to Constitution, 
139 ; debates location of capital, 
139-1-12 ; position of parties in, 
140 ; votes for Pennsylvania, 141 ; 
its action reversed by Madison, 141, 
142 ; finally decides on Potomac as 
site, 142, 143 ; asks Hamilton to re- 
port on public credit, 144 ; votes to 
pay foreign debt, 144; debate in, 
as to payment of domestic debt, 
144-150 ; arguments in, against and 
for payment of domestic creditors, 
145-147 ; rejects compromise pro- 
posed by Madison, 148 ; rejects 
proposal to assume state debt, 150, 
151 ; later led by Hamilton's and 
Jefferson's bargain to consent, 151, 
152; petitioned by Quakers to op- 
pose slavery, 152, 153; debate in, 
over its powers and on slavery, 
153-lGl ; ends debate without ac- 
tion, IGl ; later debate in, on sim- 
ilar petition, 101 ; its power over 
slavery defined by Madison and 
Gerry, 159, ICO; prohibits slave 
trade in foreign vessels, ICl ; de- 
bates proposed National Bank, 162 ; 
votes in its favor, 1C3 ; establishes 
newspaper postage, 172; arranges 
presidential succession in emer- 
gency, 176, 177 ; aims to exclude 
Jefferson, 177 ; proposal in to refer 
various matters to Hamilton, 180, 
181; refuses to let Hamilton ap- 
pear before it, 181 ; passes resolu- 
tions of inquiry concerning Hamil- 
ton's conduct, 189 ; rejects resolu- 
tions of censure, 191 ; attempts to 
block Jay treaty, 216, 217 ; review 
of Madison's leadership of, 222, 
223 ; adopts Alien and Sedition 
Acts, 231 ; prohibits introduction 
of slaves into Louisiana except by 
actual settlers, 250 ; called by Jef- 
ferson to consider British aggres- 
sions, 267 ; adopts embargo, 268 ; 
repeals it, 271 ; unable to adopt a 
policy, 280 ; suspends non-importa- 
tion act with threat to renew unless 
England and France revoke de- 
crees, 280 ; renews non-intercourse 
with England, 288 ; determines on 



war with England, 293, 294 ; passes 
embargo, 295 ; declares war, 295, 
29G ; denounces John Henry letters 
as cause for war, 298 ; adopts bank 
and tariff for protection, 319. 

Connecticut, fails to appoint dele- 
gates to Annapolis Convention, 59 ; 
its Revolutionary debt, 151. 

Constitution of the United States, 
part of Madison in framing, 84, 85 ; 
condemned by state-rights men as 
monarchical, 88, 89 ; the slavery 
compromises in, 91-109 ; strong and 
weak points in, 108, 109 ; dissatisfac- 
tion of Madison with, 110 ; his later 
efforts to secure adoption of, 110- 
112; advocated by " The Federalist," 
111, 112; struggle in Virginia over 
its ratification, 112-110 ; silent on re- 
movals from ofiice, 137 ; thought 
by Madison to justify impeachment 
for wanton removals, 138 ; amend- 
ments to, proposed by Congress, 
139 ; said to be disregarded by 
petitioners against slavery, 153 ; 
its relation to abolition defined by 
Madison, 150, 159 ; and by Gerry, 
159, 100; Madison's strict con- 
struction of, surprises Federalists, 
173, 174, 175; held by Jefferson 
to prohibit Washington's neutrality 
proclamation, 190 ; question of 
treaty power under, 210, 217 ; the 
doctrine of nullification discussed, 
234-240 ; violated by Louisiana pur- 
cliase, 247, 248. 

Constitutional Convention, called by 
Annapolis Convention, CO ; diffi- 
culties in gaining attendance of 
States, 79; its success endangered 
by feeling in South over proposed 
abandonment of Mississippi naviga- 
tion, 81-83; part played by Madi- 
son in, the "Virginia" plan, 84; 
division of parties in, 85 ; attitude 
of States'-rights party, 80-88 ; their 
secession from, 90; difficulties in, 
between large and small States, 90 ; 
divisions in, between free and slave 
States, 91 ; question of representa- 
tion in, 94 ; argument of Northern 
men against counting slaves in re- 
presentation, 95, 96; character of 



330 



INDEX 



the compromise demanded in, 96, 
97 ; position of Southern delegates 
in, 101, 103 ; debate in, over slave 
trade, 101-105 ; adopts compromise 
permitting slave trade and grant- 
ing Congress power over commerce, 

106 ; adopts fugitive slave clause, 

107 ; estimate of results of its la- 
bors, 107, 108. 

Convention of Virginia. See Legisla- 
ture. 

Convention of Virginia for r,atifying 
United States Constitution, cam- 
paign in elections for, 112 ; part 
played by Madison in, 113-115 ; 
votes to ratify Constitution, 115 ; 
adjourns, 110. 

Conway, Nelly, mother of Madison, 
3 ; statement of Rives as to her 
name, 3 ; statements of Madison 
concerning, 3, 4. 

Craddock, Lieutenant, 7. 

Craig, Sir James, governor of Canada, 
Bends Henry to investigate New 
England Federalists, 209, 300. 

Curtis, George Tickuor, calls slavery 
compromise on representation an 
" unimportant anomaly," 94. 

Dearborn, Henry, attempt of Foster 
to arrange armistice with, 308. 

Debt, public, debate over it in Conti- 
nental Congress, 28 ; in first Con- 
gress, 144-152 ; policy of Hamilton 
concerning, 149, 150. 

Decatur, Stephen, in war with Tri- 
poli, 252. 

Delaware, connection with Potomac 
navigation, 55 ; sends delegates to 
Annapolis Convention, 59 ; only 
Federalist State outside New Eng- 
land, 243. 

Democratic party, formed In first 
Congress, 1G5; its career, 165, 166; 
opinion of Hamilton on its organi- 
zation by Jefferson and Madison, 
160-168 ; reasons of Madison fo"r 
joining, 178-184 ; plans to ruin 
Hamilton, 189 ; its attack defeated 
in Congress, 189-191 ; attitude to- 
ward France, 193, 194; criticises 
the neutrality proclamation, 198 ; 
welcomes Genet, 200; suffers from 



his extravagance, 202 ; imitates 
French manners, 207 ; causes lor 
its success, 210 ; its reasons for dis- 
liking England, 214 ; attacks Alien 
and Sedition Laws, 233 ; carries 
election of 1800, 241 ; does not de- 
mand removal of Federalists from 
offices, 251 ; attempts of Federal- 
ists to discredit its foreign policy, 
263, 264 ; elects Madison president, 
272 ; determmes on war with Eng- 
land, 291, 292, 293; renominates 
Madison, 296 ; its policy during war, 
310-318 ; rejoices at peace, 318 ; 
supports national bank and protec- 
tive tariff, 319. 

Dexter, Samuel, on social equality in 
New England, 207, 208. 

Diplomatic history, neutrality de- 
bated between Hamilton and Jef- 
ferson, 195; neutrality proclama- 
tion issued, 196 ; question as to 
validity of treaty engagements of 
1778, 199, 200 ; mission of Genet to 
United States, 199-202; summary 
of Washington's foreign policy, 
210, 211 ; Jay treaty, 211 ; its mer- 
its, defects, and reasons for accept- 
ance, 211-218 ; mission of Monroe 
to France, 218-220; foreign rela- 
tions under Jefferson's administra- 
tion, 242, 243 ; controversy over 
neutral commerce and impress- 
ments, 256-259 ; Monroe-Pinkney 
treaty with England, 261-263 ; Ers- 
kine's attempt to reconcile England 
and America, 272-277 ; mission 
of Jackson to Washington, 278 ; the 
offer of Congress to France and 
England, 281 ; Napoleon's condi- 
tional revocation, 282-284; Eng- 
land's refusal, 286; further de- 
mands of Madison upon England, 
287 ; threatening language of Mad- 
ison to France, 291-294 ; circum- 
stances preceding war with Eng- 
land, 304-308; treaty of Ghent, 
318. 

Directory. See France. 

Disunion, expected in 1783, if five 
per cent, scheme fails, 35, 36 ; dan- 
ger of, on account of slave taxation 
question, 39 ; feared by Madison ia 



INDEX 



331 



1787, 74, 75 ; would probably have 
been preferred by South to abau- 
donment of Mississippi navigation, 
81 ; threatened by South in slavery 
debates in Constitutional Conven- 
tion, 99, 100, 102, 103, 109 ; freely 
threatened during Washington's 
administration, 1S7 ; denounced by 
Madison late in life, 237 ; threat- 
ened by New England, 301, 302; 
Madison's last words a warning 
against, 324. 

Douai, Merlin de, President of French 
National Convention, receives Mon- 
roe, 218. 

Draper, Lyman C, letters of Madison 
to, on his ancestry, 3, 4 n. , C. 

Ellsworth, Oliver, in Continental 
Congress, 30 ; his education, 31 ; dis- 
claims Interest of North for or 
against slave trade, 102 ; makes cyn- 
ical reply to Mason's condemnation 
of slavery, 102, 103. 

Emancipation, movement for, in North- 
ern States, 91 ; petition of Benjamin 
Franklin in favor of, 152, 153 ; of 
Warner Mifflin for, 1(51. 

Embargo, recommended by Jefferson, 
passed by Congress, 2C8 ; fails to 
affect England or France, 2C9 ; its 
results in United States, 2G9 ; leads 
to Bayonne decree, 270 ; repealed, 
271 ; its failure explained by Madi- 
son, 278, 279 ; renewed on eve of 
war with England, 295. 

Emott, James, on doctrine of block- 
ade, 286. 

England, commercial retaliation 
against, proposed luider the confed- 
eration, 47 ; Virginian trade with, 
47, 48 ; rejoices at prospect of 
trouble over Mississippi navigation, 

- 78 ; its constitution imitated in Fed- 
eral Convention, 89, 90; discrimi- 
nated against in tonnage duties of 
first Congress, 134, 135; prejudice 
of Madison against, 135 ; war with 
France, 197 ; Federalists declared 
by opposition to be partisans of, 
194, 197, 198, 200,203-205 ; its policy 
encourages dislike in America, 209 ; 
makes Jay treaty, 211 ; necessity 



of avoiding war with, 211, 214; 
causes for Democratic dislike of, 

214 ; its overbearing attitude, 214, 

215 ; real attitude of Federalists to- 
ward, 215 ; temporary stoppage of 
friction with, 242, 243 ; loses carry- 
ing trade to America, 254, 255 ; 
obliged to adopt measures against 
neutrals in order to defeat France, 
25G, 257 ; inability of America to 
resist its depredations, 257, 258, 
259 ; impresses seamen from Amer- 
ican vessels, 258 ; non-importation 
measures adopted against, 2G0 ; re- 
fuses to abandon impressment, 262 ; 
makes treaty with Jlonroe, 262 ; 
refuses to reopen negotiations, 263 ; 
its part in Chesapeake controversy, 
266 ; issues order in council, 2C8 ; 
not affected by embargo, 269 ; at- 
tempted reconciliation with, made 
through Erskiiie, 272-275 ; attempt 
of Congress to induce her to revoke 
orders, 280, 281 ; view of Madison 
as to her polic5', 282 ; refuses to 
recognize France's alleged revoca- 
tion of decrees, 286 ; refuses to 
abandon blockade, 286 ; growth of 
party desirous of war with, 292, 
294 ; war declared with, 295, 296 ; 
position of Madison concerning war 
with, 296-303 ; said to have plotted 
with New England, 298, 301 ; points 
out to United States that France 
has not revoked decrees, 305 ; pro- 
mises to repeal order in council 
as soon as France revokes, 306 ; 
does so, 307 ; fails to prevent war 
on impressment issue, 308 ; its suc- 
cesses in war, 316, 317 ; makes 
peace of Ghent, 318. 

Erskine, David M., confers with Mad- 
ison before his inauguration, 272 ; 
exceeds his instruotioiis and prom- 
ises a %vithdrawal of orders in coun- 
cil, 273 ; does not insist on other 
concessions, 274 ; proposes settle- 
ment of Chesapeake matter, 274 ; 
fails to resent remarks of Smith, 
274 ; his arrangement repudiated 
and himself recalled, 275 ; com- 
ments of Madison on his behavior, 
276 ; replaced by Jackson, 277. 



332 



INDEX 



Essex Junto, said by Madison to have 
been proved through Henry letters 
to plan secession, 298, 301. 

" Fedebalist," Madison's share in, 
111, 112. 

Federalist party, Madison at first a 
member of, 1G4 ; its career, 165 ; 
survival of its principles, ICG ; se- 
cession of Madison from, 172, 173 ; 
views Madison with suspicion, 174- 
176 ; in Congress, arranges presiden- 
tial succession in emergency so as 
to exclude Jefferson, 176, 177 ; ac- 
cuses Madison of changing opinions 
in hopes of place, 180, 181 ; its 
deference to Hamilton, 180 ; ac- 
cused of desiring monarchy by 
Jefferson and Madison, 186 ; and of 
favoring England, 194, 197, 198, 200, 
203-205 ; profits by reaction against 
Genet, 202, 203 ; accused of deluding 
Washington, 204, 206 ; the only im- 
partial American party, 215 ; com- 
mits blunders after X Y Z affair, 
231 ; passes Alien and Sedition Acts, 
231 ; its attitude toward foreign 
immigrants, 231, 232 ; loses popu- 
larity, 233 ; quarrels in, 240 ; de- 
feated in election of 1800, 240, 241 ; 
loses ground everywhere, 243; re- 
joices at peace of Ghent, 318 ; dis- 
appears from politics, 319. 

Ferrar, Will, 7. 

Finances of the Revolution, their 
breakdown in 1780 described by 
Madison, 20 ; reforms suggested by 
Madison of state paper money, 21 ; 
proposal to collect supplies and pay 
in certificates, 22 ; drawing of bills 
on France without waiting for ac- 
ceptance of loan, 28 ; public debt 
in 1783, 28 ; deficit in revenue, 29 ; 
the impost scheme defeated by 
Rhode Island, 33 ; the five per cent, 
scheme proposed, 33 ; debate con- 
cerning, 34-37 ; faUs, 38 ; paper- 
money craze in States, 67. 

Floyd, Catherine, engaged to Madi- 
son, 42; breaks the engagement, 
43,44. 

Floyd, General William, wislies his 
daughter to marry Madison, 42. 



Foster, Augustus J. , British minister, 
tries to prevent outbreak of hostil- 
ities on learning of revocation of 
orders in council, 307, 308. 

France, trade with, preferred by Madi- 
son to English trade, 136 ; enthusi- 
asm of Jefferson and Madison for, 
192 ; cautious attitude of Hamilton 
in payments to, angers Democrats, 
193, 194 ; declares war against Eng- 
land, 195 ; desire of Democrats to 
help, 197 ; relations with, according 
to treaty of 1778, discussed, 199 ; de- 
fended by Democrats in Genet case, 
203 ; gratitude to, traditional, 209 ; 
mission of Monroe to, 218-220 ; com- 
mits outrages on American mer- 
chant vessels, 219 ; indignant at Jay 
treaty, 220 ; takes Democratic view 
of American administration, 220 ; 
relations with, during Adams's ad- 
ministration, 230 ; X Y Z affair, 230; 
improved relations of Jefferson's 
administration with, 242 ; enforces 
Berlin decree against American ves- 
sels, 266, 267 ; these aggressions not 
resented by Jefferson, 267 ; attempt 
of Congress to induce it to revoke 
decrees, 280, 281 ; expectations of 
Madison as to its policy, 282 ; makes 
a conditional reply to the conditional 
offer of Congress, 282-284; insists 
that England also withdraw, or that 
United States " cause rights to be 
respected," 283 ; refuses compensa- 
tion for Rambouillet decree, 284 ; 
succeeds in inducing Madison to 
accept revocation, 285 ; continues 
to seize American ships, 285, 286 ; 
partiality of Madison's policy to- 
ward, 287, 288 ; success of French 
policy, 288, 289 ; vigorous language 
of Madison toward, 291, 292, 293; 
war with, threatened, 294 ; does not 
really revoke decrees until war is 
about to break out between United 
States and England, 304-305; dis- 
plays ante-dated revocation, 307. 
Franklin, Benjamin, signs memorial 
for abolition of slavery, 152 ; de- 
nounced by Southerners in Congress, 
153. 
French Revolution, applauded by 



INDEX 



333 



Democrats, 193 ; desires of Demo- 
crats to assist, 194 ; attitude of Fed- 
eralists toward, 193, 195 ; its phrase- 
ology and mannerisms imitated iu 
America, '207. 
Freueau, Pliilip, Madison's responsi- 
bility for his establishment in State 
Department, IGS ; Madison's pur- 
poses in recommending him to Jef- 
ferson, 109, 170 ; his paper and its 
character, 170, 171 ; his relations to 
Jefferson and Madison, 171 ; care 
of Madison for, 172. 

Gallatin, Albert, opposes Alien and 
Sedition Acts, 233 ; career as secre- 
tary of treasury, 252 ; condemned 
by opposition for failure of Ers- 
kine's negotiations, 275 ; warns Mad- 
ison of invasion of Chesapeake, 317. 

Guardoqui, , negotiates with Jay 

about Mississippi navigation, 79. 
Genet, Edmond Charles, his recogni- 
tion opposed by Hamilton, 190 ; up- 
held successfully by Jefferson, 200 ; 
anxiety of Madison as to his recep- 
tion, 200 ; alienates Jefferson by his 
excesses, 201 ; accuses Jefferson of 
duplicity, 201, 202; at first pro- 
mises good behavior, 202 ; his recall, 
207, 209 ; effect of his presence on 
parties in United States, 207 ; fears 
of Jefferson that his recall may 
cause an insurrection, 209. 

Georgia, willing for sake of alliance 
with Spain to abandon Mississippi 
navigation, 32 ; fails to appoint dele- 
gates to Annapolis convention, 52; 
attitude toward slavery in Constitu- 
tional Convention, 109. 

Gerry, Elbridge, anticipated by Henry 
in device of gerrymandering, 120; 
in first Congress opposes taxation 
of molasses, 127 ; favors tax on im- 
ported slaves, 132 ; asserts power of 
Congress to interfere with slavery 
and slave trade, 159, 160. 

Gerrymandering, used by Henry in 
Virginia to defeat Madison's elec- 
tion to Congress, 120, 121. 

Giddlngs, Joshua R., attempt to expel 
from Congress, 185. 

Giles, W. B., offers resolutions de- 



manding investigation of Hamil- 
ton's conduct, 189 ; offers renolu- 
tions of censure, 191. 

Goodhue, Benjamin, opposes impost 
on molasses, 127. 

Gorham, Nathaniel, seconds Pinck- 
ney's motion for extension of period 
of slave trade, 100. 

Hamilton, Alexander, in Continental 
Congress, 30 ; equal to Madison iu 
political information, 31 ; opposes 
limitation of live per cent, scheme to 
twenty-five years, 34, 35 ; does not 
wish to postpone crisis of confeder- 
ation, 30 ; supports Madison's sla- 
very compromise concerning taxa- 
tion, 41 ; writes address of An- 
napolis Convention, 59 ; on name 
" Federalist," 80 ; in Constitvitlonal 
Convention proposes representation 
according to free population, 94 ; 
his share in " The Federalist," 111 ; 
carries New York for Constitution, 
115; his bargain concerning loca- 
tion of capital, 143, 151 ; his report 
on public credit, 145; suspected of 
purpose to throw goverimient of 
country into hands of wealthy, 149 ; 
recommeuds a bank, 102 ; his argu- 
ment persuades Washington, 1G3 ; 
becomes convinced of Madison's 
opposition, inc ; still believes him 
honest, 100; begins to suspect sin- 
cerity of his motives, 100, 1G7 ; ac- 
cuses him of tampering with Presi- 
dent's message, 107 ; and of aiding 
Freneau, 108 ; avows intention to 
treat Madison as an enemy, 181 ; 
begins newspaper controversy, 185 ; 
attacks Jefferson bitterly, 180 ; con- 
sulted by Washington as to declin- 
ing a second term, ISO ; denies ac- 
cusation of being a monarchist, ISO; 
violently attacked by Jefferson to 
Washington, 187; his reply, 188; 
his conduct attacked in Congress 
by Giles and Madison, 189, 190; 
replies successfully, 190; failure of 
resolution of censure against, 191 ; 
personal hatred of Madison and 
Jefferson for, 192 ; condemned also 
because of his attitude toward 



334 



INDEX 



France, 193 ; slow to pay French 
debt, 193 ; defends neutrality in 
"Pacificus" papers, 198; argues 
against alliance with France, 199 ; 
and against receiving a minister 
from French Republic, 199 ; stoned 
for defending Jay treaty, 212. 

Hamilton, John C, asserts Madison's 
authorship of Giles's resolutions, 
189, 190. 

Hartford Convention, its purpose, 311; 
alarm felt toward, 312 ; brought to 
nothing by peace of Ghent, 311. 

Henry, John, his revelations bought 
by Madison, 297 ; said to prove a 
plot for reaimexing New England 
to Great Britain, 298 ; said to be a 
just cause for war, 298 ; his career 
as emissary of governor of Canada 
in Massachusetts, 299 ; compro- 
mises nobody, 300, 301. 

Henry, Patrick, opposes ratification 
of Constitution, 112 ; considers state 
sovereignty attacked by Constitu- 
tion, 114 ; continues to oppose Con- 
stitution iu Virginia Assembly, 118 ; 
leads A.ssembly to call for a new 
convention, 118; nominates and 
elect.s two anti-federalist senators, 
119 ; gerrymanders Madison's con- 
gressional district, 120 ; fails to pre- 
vent his election, 120, 121. 

Hildreth, Richard, on Madison's ac- 
quaintance with Kentucky Resolu- 
tions, 234, 235 ; on Madison's career, 
323. 

Humphreys, Colonel David, letter of 
Madison to, on secession of New 
England, 302. 

Impressment, its exercise by England, 
258, 259 ; discussion over, in Monroe 
treaty, 262 ; abandoned in treaty, 
262 ; used as pretext for war of 1812, 
308 ; yet not mentioned in treaty of 
peace, 308. 

Independence of colonies, urged by 
Virginia, 15, 16. 

Jackson, Francis J., replaces Ers- 
kine as British minister to United 
States, 278 ; accuses Madison of bad 
faith, 278 ; his recall demanded, 278. 



Jay, John, instructed as minister to 
Spain, regarding Mississippi naviga- 
tion, 31-33 ; tries to induce Con- 
gress to abandon Mississippi navi- 
gation in order to make treaty with 
Spain, 79 ; wishes to evade Articles 
of Confederation, 80 ; his project 
opposed by Madison, 81, 82; his share 
in " The Federalist," 87, 111 ; his 
treaty with England, 211 ; its char- 
acter and justification, 211 ; con- 
demned in cities, 212 ; his negotia- 
tions opposed by Monroe, 220. 

Jay treaty, 211-218. See Diplomatic 
History. 

Jefferson, Thomas, letter of Madison 
to, on condition of country, 19, 20 ; 
consoles Madison on his disappoint- 
ment in love, 44 ; at Madison's sug- 
gestion, confers with Maryland dele- 
gates on Potomac navigation, 53; 
his act for establishing religious 
freedom passed by legislature, 65 ; 
comments on its passage, 65 n. ; 
wishes Madison to join him in Eu- 
rope, 68 ; corresponds with Madison 
on steamboats, 09, 70 ; informed by 
Madison of prehistoric relics, 71 ; 
on Shays's rebellion, 75 ; on bargain 
in Constitutional Convention be- 
tween New England and slave States, 
106 ; letters of Madison to, on Con- 
stitution, 110, 110; and on Virginia 
politics, 119, 120; letter of Madison 
to, on debate over President's title, 
124 ; letter of Madison to, on for- 
eign commerce, 13G ; his views on 
removals from office, 138 ; relation 
to bargain for location of capital, 
143, 152 ; opposes a national bank, 
163 ; influences Madison to abandon 
Federalist party, 164, 174; his char- 
acter and motives as viewed by 
Hamilton, 166, 167, 168 ; connec- 
tion with Freneau, 168-171, 175; 
suggestion of Madison to, with re- 
gard to circulating Freneau's paper, 
172 ; his tour in Eastern States mis- 
represented by Federalists, 175 ; ha- 
tred of Federalists for, 176 ; action 
of Federalists in Congress to pre- 
vent his accessionas president pro 
tempore, 176, 177 ; attacked by 



INDEX 



335 



Hamilton in press, 18G ; condeiims 
Hamiltou in letter to Wasliingtou, 
187, 188 ; his personal hatred of 
Hawiltou, 192 ; dialikes him for at- 
titude toward French Revolution, 
193 ; sj-nipathizes with Jacobins, 
193, 194 ; objects to declaration of 
neutrality, 195, 19G ; secures modi- 
fication of proclamation, 19G ; wishes 
to aid France as far as possible, 197 ; 
urges Madison to reply to Hamilton, 
198 ; secures recognition of Genet, 
200 ; letters of Madison to, on Ge- 
net's reception, 200 ; condemns 
Genet's excesses, 201, 202 ; fears 
reaction in favor of administration, 
202, 203 ; letters of Madison to, on 
Washington, 204 ; describes Wash- 
ington's anger at Freneau, 205 ; not 
sincere in considering him a dupe, 
206 ; fears recall of Genet may cause 
revolution, 209 ; letter of Madison 
to, on Jay treaty in House of Repre- 
sentatives, 217 ; his honest love for 
farming, 22G, 227 ; correspondence of 
Madison with, concerning farming, 
228 ; requested by Madison to fur- 
nish material for house, 228, 229; 
writes Kentucky Resolutions, 234 ; 
author of nullification, 234 ; avoids 
public responsibility for resolutions, 
235 ; his probable reasons for writ- 
ing them, 235, 23G ; denied on erro- 
neous grounds by Madison to have 
used term " nullification," 239, 
240 ; offers Madison secretaryship 
of state, 241 ; his inauguration, 242 ; 
in his inaugural speech urges har- 
mony, 243 ; success of his lirst 
term, 244 ; popiilar support of, called 
infatuation by PV.deralists, 244 ; his 
absolute control as a leader, 245 ; 
his secretive methods, 245 ; bold- 
ness in assuming responsibility for 
Louisiana purchase and other mat- 
ters, 24G ; overshadows and directs 
Madison, 24G ; does not foresee con- 
sequences of Louisiana annexation 
in stimulating slavery, 240, 247 ; 
his purposes to insure peace, 247, 
249 ; abused by opponents, 247 ; ad- 
mits unconstitutionality of Louisi- 
ana treaty, 248 ; comments on criti- 



cisms of Federalists, 248 ; his for- 
tune in seizing opportunity, 249 ; 
sends expedition of Lewie and 
Clarke, 249 ; gains credit for Galla- 
tin's financial policy, 252 ; other 
successes of his first term, 252 ; 
becomes involved in foreign con- 
troversy, 154 ; his naval policy, 
257, 258 ; supported by Jladison in 
policy of commercial pressure, 260 ; 
sends Piukney to make a treaty 
with Kngland,2Gl; instructs to in- 
sist on abandonment of impress- 
ment, 2G2 ; dissatisfied witli treaty, 
2G3 ; after Leopard affair, orders 
British ships of war out of Amer- 
ican waters, 2G5 ; reluctant to go 
to war with France, 2C7 ; calls 
special session of Congress to con- 
sider England's aggressions, 2G7 ; 
recommends an embargo, 268 ; re- 
ceives news of order in council and 
Milan decree, 2G8 ; loses control of 
party with failure of embargo, 270, 
271 ; dictates choice of successor, 
272 ; letter of Madison to, on Ers- 
kine affair, 27G ; on preparations 
for war, 293. 

Jennings, Paul, describes Madison's 
flight from Britisli, 317 n.; describes 
Madison's kindness to slaves, 321 ; 
and his temperance, 321 ; his esti- 
mate of Madison's cliaracter, 323. 

Jones, Joseph, desires to be appointed 
delegate to Congress, 22. 

Jordan, Cicely, suit of Pooley against, 
7. 

Kentucky Resolutions, their prepa- 
ration by Jefferson, 234, 235. 

King, Rufu8,--i>»niark of Giles to, on 
Madison's authorship of resolutions 
against Hamilton, 190. 

Knox, General Henry, on Genet's 
course, 201. 

Lee, Richard Henry, opposes Con- 
stitution, 112; favors a high-sound- 
ing presidential title, 124. 

Legislature, of Virginia, instructs 
delegates to Congress to urge inde- 
pendence of colonies, 15, IG ; de- 
bates Bill of Rights, 16; adopts 



L^ 



336 



INDEX 



religious liberty, 17, 18 ; elects Mad- 
ison member of Council, 19 ; and 
delegate to Continental Congress, 
19 ; neglects to pay his salary, 23- 
25 ; its vacillating course regarding 
Mississippi navigation, 31-33 ; re- 
vokes assent to impost law, 34 ; but 
assents to five per cent, scheme, 34 ; 
its power to make or mar central 
government, 46 ; agrees to proposed 
amendment to Articles of Confed- 
eration, 46 ; promises to pay requi- 
sitions and old debts, 46, 47 ; agrees 
to temporary control by Congress 
of trade, 47 ; led by Madison to es- 
tablish ports of entry to regulate 
foreign trade, 49, 50 ; later modifies 
the law, 51 ; appoints commission- 
ers to discuss Potomac question with 
Maryland, 54 ; considers petitions to 
improve trade, 55 ; defeats attempt 
of Madison to instruct delegates to 
give Congress power over financial 
and commercial questions, 56 ; in- 
duced by influence of Maryland to 
appoint commissioners to Annapolis 
Convention, 57, 58 ; elects delegates 
to Federal Convention, 60; disre- 
gards treaty provisions with Eng- 
land, 61, 62 ; passes act to incorpo- 
rate Episcopal Church, 63 ; debates 
question of compulsory support of 
religion, 63, 64 ; passes act for es- 
tablishing religious freedom, 65 ; 
resists paper-money craze, 67 ; in- 
structs delegates to oppose aban- 
donment of Mississippi navigation, 
83; led by Henry to call for a second 
Constitutional Convention, 118 ; 
elects two anti-Federalist senators, 
119 ; gerrymanders Madison's con- 
gressional district, 120, 121 ; Madi- 
son's visit to, in 1798, 230, 235; 
adopts resolutions against Alien and 
Sedition Laws, 235 ; part played by 
Madison in, 1799, 236. 

Leopard and Chesapeake affair, 264- 
266, 274. 

Lewis and Clarke, their expedition 
sent by Jefferson, 249, 250. 

Library of Congress, proposed by 
Madison, 31. 

Lincoln, Benjamin, captured at 



Charleston, 19 ; defeats Shays's Re- 
bellion, 73. 

Little Belt affair, 290. 

Livermore, Samuel, his ingenious ar- 
gument as to taxing importation of 
slaves, 131. 

Liverpool, Lord, connection with John 
Henry letters, 300. 

Livingston, Robert R., interview 
of Jefferson and Madison with, 
175. 

Louisiana, purchase of, essentially 
Jefferson's policy, 246 ; unwarranted 
by Constitution, 247, 248 ; justified 
by general welfai-e, 248 ; a result of 
fortunate circumstances, 248, 249; 
its consequences not foreseen by 
Jefferson, 249, 250 ; encourages slave 
trade, 250, 251. 

Madison, Maky, wife of Captain 
Isaac Madison, 7, 8. 

Madison ancestry, statement of Mad- 
ison concerning, 4 n. 

Madison, Captain Isaac, supposed by 
Rives to be ancestor of James Mad- 
ison, 7 ; his career in Virginia, 7, 8 ; 
proof that he was not James's an- 
cestor, 8, 9 ; dies leaving a wife 
and daughter, 8, 9. 

Madison, James, father of President 
Madison, 3, 4 ; his estates and 
wealth, 5 ; educates his children, 
10; his death, 242.' 

Madison, James, dates of birth and 
death, 1 ; said by J. Q. Adams to 
have died on anniversary of ratifican 
tion of Constitution by Virginia, 
1-2 ; error in the coincidence, 2, 3 ; 
his mother's family and name, 3, 4 ; 
his ancestry, 4-9 ; his own state- 
ments concerning family, 4 n., 5, 
6, 9 ; sent to school, 10 ; gr.ititude 
toward schoolmaster, 10 ; prepares 
for and enters Princeton, 10 ; con- 
flicting statements concerning his 
studies, 11 ; depressed by ill-health, 
11 ; takes deep interest in theology, 
11, 12 ; becomes opponent of reli- 
gious intolerance, 12, 13 ; speaks 
disparagingly of politics, 13, 14. 
Revolutionary Leader. Errone-, 
ously said to have joined a militia 



INDEX 



337 



company, 15 ; member of county 
committee of safety, 15 ; delegate 
to Virginia Convention, 15; on 
committee to frame Constitution, 
10 ; advocates recognition of right to 
religious freedom instead of tolera- 
tion, IC, 17 ; elected to Assembly, 
17 ; refuses to solicit or buy votes 
and loses reijlection, IS ; chosen 
member of governor's council, 19. 
In Continental Congress. Elected 
delegate to Congress, 19 ; describes 
to Jefferson the desperate situation 
in 1780, 20 ; considers lack of rev- 
enue the true cause, 20 ; proposes 
fruitlessly that Congress request 
States to cease issuing paper money, 
21 ; proposes enforced collection of 
supplies, 22 ; his industry, 23 ; ap- 
peals to Virginia for pecuniary aid, 
23, 24 ; helped by Solomon, a 
broker, 24 ; eventually paid, 24, 25 ; 
takes slight interest in military af- 
fairs, 25 ; his lack of enthusiasm, 
26, 27 ; on finance committee, 28 ; 
disgusted at method of drawing 
foreign bills, 28 ; his share in pro- 
posing remedies, 30 ; his knowledge 
of constitutional law, 30 ; urges 
formation of a Library of Congress, 
31 ; instructs Jay to insist upon 
Mississippi navigation, 31 ; opposes 
rescinding these instructions, 32; 
condemns rejection by Rhode Is- 
land of impost scheme, 33, 34 ; re- 
fuses to change his position to ac- 
commodate Virginia, 34 ; his reasons 
for favoring scheme, 35 ; less im- 
patient than Hamilton, 35, 3G; 
writes address urging acceptance of 
five per cent, scheme, 3G ; proposes 
a compromise on basis of taxation 
as concerns slaves, 41 ; love affair 
with Miss Floyd, 42 ; jilted by her, 
43 ; consoled by Jefferson, 4-1. 
Member of Virginia Lrgishiture. 
Chosen to Virginia Assembly, 45; 
hopes to strengthen Union, 46; 
supports measures to give Congress 
greater power, 47 ; introduces a 
bill to establish ports of entry in 
"■ Virginia, 49 ; wishes to regulate 
commerce, 50; his purpose de- 



feated, 50, 51 ; his purpose to stim- 
ulate Virginian trade, 52 ; his views 
on navigation of Potomac, 52 ; sug- 
gests to Jefferson a conference with 
Maryland, 53, 54; secures appoint- 
ment of commissioners by Vir- 
ginia, 54 ; advocates, vainly, grant- 
ing Congress power to regulate 
trade, 56 ; prepares resolution to 
appoint eommisfiioners to meet re- 
presentatives of other States, 57 ; 
fails to carry measure, 57 ; after re- 
port of Maryland's proposal, secures 
pas.sage of resolution, 5S ; chosen 
to Federal Convention, GO ; chair- 
man of committee to codify Vir- 
ginia statutes, 61 ; tries, vainly, to 
secure payment of British debts, 
G2 ; votes for incorporation of Epis- 
copal Church, 63 ; opposes bill to 
tax for support of church, 04 ; cir- 
culates a " Memorial and Remon- 
strance," 64; his arguments, G5, 
6t; ; praised by Jefferson, 65 n. ; 
leads opposition to issue of paper 
money, 67 ; assents to bill author- 
izing use of tobacco certificates, 07 ; 
continues to study politics and sci- 
ence, G8, 69 ; on Rumsey's steam- 
ship, 69, 70 ; on discoveries of fos- 
sils and human relics, 70-72. 
In Congress. Describes collapse 
of Confederacy in 1787, 74 ; sus- 
pects plans for a monarchy, 74 ; 
discouraged at outlook for Consti- 
tutional Convention, 7G ; opposes 
Jay's plan to abandon Mississippi 
navigation, 81 ; fears it will ruin 
Constitutional Convention, 82, 83 ; 
said to have "bargained" on this 
point with Kentucky delegates in 
Virginia legislature. 82 ; fears Mis- 
sissippi question will prevent Vir- 
ginia from appointing delegates to 
convention, 82. 
Member of Federal Convention. 
" The Father of the Constitution," 
84; his report of proceedings of 
convention, 84 ; his relation to for- 
mation of Constitution, 84, 85 ; 
on use of term " Federal," 86 n. ; 
unconscious of his own use of 
British precedents, 90 ; views on 



338 



INDEX 



slavery, 91 ; recognizes difficulties 
in convention to lie between North 
and South, 92, 99 ; wishes slaves to 
count in basis of representation, 94, 
95 ; opposed to foreign slave trade, 
104 ; disapproves its permission in 
Constitution, 105 ; on finality of 
slavery compromises, 107 ; his view 
of their necessity to preserve Union, 
108, 109. 

Advocate of Constitution in Vir- 
ginia. Doubtful as to success of 
plan, 110 ; later determines to urge 
it, 110, 111 ; disapproves proposal for 
a second convention. 111 ; his share 
in "The Federalist," 111-112; re- 
turns to Virginia as candidate ^or 
convention, 112; not an orator, 
113; his reasoning ability, 113; 
doubtful of success, 114 ; bears 
chief burden of debate, 115; after 
ratification returns to Congress, 
lie ; described by Brissot de War- 
ville, 117-118 ; defeated for sena- 
tor in Virginia Assembly through 
Henry's infiuence, 119 ; wishes elec- 
tion to House of Representatives, 
119 ; his election in spite of "gerry- 
mander " arranged by Henry, 120, 
121. 

In Congress. Describes contro- 
versy over title of President, 124 ; 
introduces revenue plan in Con- 
gress, 126 ; willing to admit inci- 
dental protection, 126 ; advocates 
taxation on imported slaves, 131, 
132 ; proposes discriminating ton- 
nage duties, 134 ; especially against 
Great Britain, 135 ; calls advocates 
of English trade "Anglicists," 135, 
136 ; acts as leader of House in 
organizing government, 13G, 137; 
on power of President to remove 
from office, 138 ; considers wanton 
removal sufficient cause for im- 
peachment, 138 ; proposes twelve 
declaratory amendments to Consti- 
tution, 139 ; labors to prevent es- 
tablishment of national capital in 
Pennsylvania, 141, 142; opposes as- 
sumption of state debts, 143 ; con- 
siders the Southern location of cap- 
ital a compensation, 143 ; reports in 



favor of petition to settle public 
debt, 144 ; proposes discrimination 
in favor of original holders of do- 
mestic debt, 147, 148 ; his proposal 
impracticable, 149 ; unjustly as- 
sumes superiority for Virginia over 
Massachusetts during Revolution, 
150 ; his views on Hamilton's and 
Jefferson's bargain, 152 ; stigma- 
tizes debates on Franklin's anti- 
slavery petitions as "indecent," 
152 ; advises moderation on part of 
slaveholders, 154 ; suggests investi- 
gation of American participation in 
slave trade to foreign countries, 
155, 15C ; wishes a decisive declara- 
tion as to limits of Congressional 
power, 156 ; dreads effect of agita- 
tion, 157 ; finally resents extrava- 
gance of pro-slavery advocates, 159 ; 
courage of his position, 162 ; op- 
poses Hamilton's plan of a bank as 
unconstitutional, 162; at Washing- 
ton's request, writes out his objec- 
tions, 163 ; his change from Feder- 
alist to Democrat, 164 ; influenced 
by Jefferson, 164 ; comments of 
Hamilton on his attitude, 166 ; ac- 
cused of low motives for his opposi- 
tion, 166, 167 ; and of tampering 
with Washington's address to Con- 
gress, 167, 168 ; accused by Hamil- 
ton of complicity with Freneau, 
16S ; defends liis patronage of Fre- 
neau to Randolph, 169 ; admits his 
approval of Freueau's paper, 169, 
170 ; hopes it will act as an anti- 
dote to monarchical schemes, 170 ; 
denies any connection with its con- 
tents, 171 ; advises Freneau not to 
send his paper by mail, 172; his 
"apostasy "as viewed by Federal- 
ists, 172-175; his Northern tour 
with Jefferson regarded by Federal- 
ists with suspicion, 175, 176 ; ad" 
vocates succession of secretary of 
state in case of death of President 
and Vice-President, 176 ; condemns 
stock-jobbing in connection with 
bank, 177 ; dreads its influence 
over country, 178, 179 ; accused by 
Federalists of joining the winning 
side, 180 ; seems to be governed by 



INDEX 



339 



animosity toward Hamilton, ISO, 
181 ; bitterness of Hamilton toward, 
181 ; discussion of causes for Mad- 
ison's changed position, 181-183 ; 
yerdict of history adverse, 183, 184 ; 
consulted by Washington on propri- 
ety of declining a reelection, 18C ; 
asserted to be author of Giles's 
resolutions of censure on Hamil- 
ton, 180, 190; supports them in 
debate, 192 ; comments of Ames 
upon, 192 ; sympathizes with French 
Revolution, 193; condemns Ham- 
ilton's slowness in paying French 
debt, 193 ; slow in committing 
himself with regard to neutral- 
ity, 198 ; takes his cue from party 
denunciation of Washington, 198 ; 
urged by Jefferson to reply to Ham- 
ilton's "Pacificus" papers, 198; 
writes a series under name "Hel- 
vidius," 198, 199; hopes Genet will 
be warmly welcomed, 2CX) ; con- 
demns Genet's folly, 202; reports 
to Jefferson increased strength of 
"Anglican party " in Virginia, 202, 
203 ; regrets Washington's position, 
204; hardly sincere in considering 
him a dupe of Hamilton, 20G ; de- 
plores Jay treaty, 216 ; mtroduces 
resolution calUng for Jay's instruc- 
tions and other papers, 21 G ; con- 
demns Washington's refusal, 217 ; 
bitterly disappointed at support of 
treaty in the House, 217 ; his cor- 
respondence with Monroe relative 
to the treaty, 221, 222 ; review of 
his part in Congress, -222, '223 ; mar- 
ries Mrs. Dolly Payne Todd, 223. 
In Retirement. His continued in- 
terest in politics, 225; historical 
Talue of his writings, 225, 2-2G ; their 
stiff literary style, 22G ; his m.ld 
interest in farming compared with 
Jefferson's, 22G-228 ; builds house 
at Montpellier, 228-230 ; his care m 
furnishing it, 229, 230. 
In Virginia Assembly, the Vir- 
ginia liesolxilions. Elected to le- 
gislature, 23l)-23G; possibly con- 
nected with Jefferson's Kentucky 
Resolutions, 234, 235; determines 
to induce Virginia legislature to 



protest against Alien and Sedition 
Acts, 235 ; later, in 1830-183C, ex- 
plains his conduct, 236-238 ; denies 
any connection between the Vir- 
ginia Resolutions and later doctrine 
of nullification, 237 : denounces se- 
cession, 237, 238 ; tries to excul- 
pate Jefferson, 239, 240. 
Secretary of State. His reasons 
for accepting Jt-fferson's offer of 
Department of State, 241 ; detained 
from attendance at inauguration by 
death of father, 242 ; rejoices in de- 
cUiie of Federalist party, 243 ; over- 
shadowed in his oflBce by Jefferson, 
246; writes paper on British treat- 
ment of neutral trade, 257 ; indig- 
nant at English depredations, 258 ; 
favors non-importation, 260 ; con- 
demns Monroe's treaty of 1806, 263 ; 
complains of British indifference to 
proclamation ordering them out of 
American waters, 2GG. 
Pre.siiient. Named for succession 
by Jefferson, 272 ; received a di- 
minished electoral vote, 272 ; con- 
fers with Erskine,272, 273 ; on his 
assurances issues proclamation re- 
pealing non-intercourse, 274 ; his 
sudden popularity, 275; forced by 
Canning's action to resume em- 
bargo, 275 ; bitterly condemned by 
mercantile classes, 275, 276; coni- 
ments on situation, 27G ; his morti- 
fication, 277 ; issues proclamation 
recalling vessels, 277 ; acts as his 
ovra foreign secretary, 278; in- 
sulted by Jackson, demands his 
recall, 278 ; later admits failure 
of embargo, 278; unable to com- 
mand harmony in his party, 279; 
wishes non-intercourse with both 
England and France, 280 ; author- 
ized to enforce it against either 
country, 280; his dismay at pro- 
spect, 282 ; expects little result from 
non-intercourse, 282 ; accepts state- 
ment of Napoleon as to revocation 
of Milan and Berlin decrees, 283 ; 
orders Armstrong to insist on com- 
pensation for Rambouillet decree, 
284; submits to refusal of Napo- 
leon, 284 ; issues proclamation re- 



340 



INDEX 



Toking non-intercourse with France, 
285 ; bitterly attacked by Federal- 
ists, 285, 28G ; instructs ministers to 
insist on England's revocation of 
blockade of a portion of French 
coast, 287 ; willing to help Napoleon, 
288 ; comments on Little Belt af- 
fair, 290 ; still wishes to keep 
peace, 291 ; repeats to Congress his 
complaints against Napoleon as well 
as England, 291 ; protests to France 
against its trickery, 292 ; despises 
Clay and the war party, 293 ; con- 
tinues to threaten France, 293, 294 ; 
recommends a sixty-day embargo, 
295 ; follows it by recommending a 
declaration of war, 295 ; his reasons 
for opposing war, 296 ; his rivals 
for presidential nomination, 29G ; 
asserted to have bought renomina- 
tion by yielding to war party, 297 ; 
buys letters of John Henry, 297 ; 
submits them to Congress as a 
cause for war, 298 ; later never re- 
fers to them, 298 ; his probable mo- 
tives in then believing them, 301 ; 
does not really expect secession of 
New England, 302, 303; uses the 
Henry letters in order to hurry on 
war, 303 ; this act the test of his 
character and career, 303, 304 ; 
placed in a dilemma by Napoleon's 
duplicity with regard to Berlin and 
Milan decrees, 305 ; and still more 
so by action of France in revoking 
decrees in 1812, 305-307 ; and by 
English revocation of Orders in 
Council, 307, 308 ; determines to 
continue war on impressment issue 
alone, 308 ; yet does not insist on 
even that in peace negotiations, 
308 ; hopes the war will be popu- 
lar, 309 ; despises naval success, 

310 ; his error in neglecting navy 
and failing to involve New England 
in war, 310, 311 ; bitterness toward 
New England's opposition to war, 

311 ; alarmed at Hartford Conven- 
tion, 311, 312 ; discussion of his 
error in consenting to war, 312, 313 ; 
his qualities not suited for execu- 
tive office, 313, 314 ; in spite of 
popular reputation shows weak- 



ness, 314 ; shows incompetency in 
conduct of war, 315, 316 ; devoted 
to idea of conquering Canada, 316 ; 
expelled from Washington by Brit- 
ish, 317 ; rejoices at peace of Ghent, 
319 ; undisturbed during remainder 
of term, 319; assents to a national 
bank, 319 ; and to a tariff, 319. 

In Retirement. Continues inter- 
ested in politics and history of 
country, 319, 320 ; writes much 
upon slavery, 320, 321 ; his kind- 
ness as a master, 321 ; temperate 
habits, 321, 322 ; one of the demo- 
cratic school, 322 ; relations with 
Robert Owen, 322 ; with Fanny 
Wright, 322 ; interest m education, 
322 ; in education of women, 323 ; 
contradictory estimates of, 323 ; his 
" Advice to My Country," 324. 

Characteristics. General estimate, 
313-316, 323-324 ; unfriendly views, 
166-168, 323 ; executive ability, lack 
of, 313, 314 ; farming, interest in, 
227, 228 ; imagination, lack of, 226 ; 
independence, 175, 184, 246 ; kind- 
liness, 321, 323 ; liberality, 322 ; lit- 
erary ability, 226 ; mildness, 13, 14 ; 
military weakness, 25, 309, 310, 313 ; 
modesty, 5 ; natural science, inter- 
est in, 68-72 ; oratory, 113 ; per- 
sonal appearance, 117 ; political 
ability, 61, 222, 225; reasoning 
power, 113, 115, 117, 238; religious 
views, 11, 12 ; self-seeking, 182- 
l&i, 297, 312, 314; sincerity, 169, 
172, 313 ; seriousness, 11, IS, 26, 27, 
43, 226, 227 ; studiousness, 11, 23, 
30, 45, 67, 68 ; subjection to Jeffer- 
son, 104, 193 ff., 246 ; temperance, 

321, 322 ; women, attitude toward, 

322, 323. 

Political Opinions. Annapolis 
Convention, 57, 58 ; assumption of 
state debt, 150, 151 ; bank, 162, 163, 

177, 319 ; bill of riglits, 139 ; com- 
promises in the Constitution, 107- 
109, 156 ; Constitution, 84, 110-112, 
139, 173, 237-239, 320; domestic 
debt, payment of, 147; embargo, 
278 ; England, 134, 135, 197, 276, 
287, 295, 296, 308 ; Federalists, 170, 

178, 186, 193, 200, 243 ; finances of 



INDEX 



341 



Confederation, 21, 22 ; financial 
metlioUs of Hamilton, ISl) ; five per 
cent, scheme, 33-37 ; foreign policy, 
196, 204, 274-275, 280, 281 ; France, 
" Continent;il " system of, 283-285, 
287, 288, 201-294, 304 ; French Re- 
volution, 193, 200, 203; Hartford 
Convention, 312 ; impressment, 308 ; 
instruction, doctrine of, 32-34 ; Jay 
treaty, 21G ; John Henry letters, 
298, 301, 303 ; Mississippi naviga- 
tion. 31-33, 80-83 ; navy, 310 ; neu- 
traUty proclamation, 198 ; New Eng- 
land, 302, 311 ; non-importation, 
2G0 ; nullification, 230-238, 239,240 ; 
paper money, 67, 118 ; petition, 
right of, 154 ; Potomac navigation, 
52-54 ; protection, 126, 134, 319 : 
removals from office, 138 ; religious 
freedom, 12, 13, 16, 17, 62-66 ; se- 
cession, 237, 324 ; site of capital, 
141-143 ; slave trade, 132, 155, 159 ; 
slavery, 108, 109, 320 ; slave ratio 
in representation, 94, 99, 104, 105 ; 
slave ratio in taxation, 41 ; slavery, 
power of Congress over, 150, 159 ; 
state sovereignty, 237 ; taxation, 
126, 131 ; titles, presidential, 124 ; 
trade in Virginia, 49-51 ; treaty 
power, 217 ; union, necessity of, 
46, 48, 62, 74, 81-83 ; Virginia Reso- 
lutions, 235 ff. ; war of 1812, 312, 
313,314, 316. 

Madison, John, patentee in 1635, sup- 
posed ancestor of James Madison, 
6. 

Magraw, , saves portrait of Wash- 
ington from British, 318. 

Maryland, navigates Potomac con- 
currently with Virginia, 52, 53 ; ap- 
points commissioners to discuss 
Potomac matter with Virginia, 54 ; 
suggests inviting all the States to 
send delegates, 55 ; fails to send 
delegates to Annapolis Convention, 
59. 

Martin, Luther, opposes any central- 
ization as monarchical, 75 ; con- 
demns action of Federal Conven- 
tion as beyond its authorization, 
88, 89 ; on nature of Constitution, 
89 ; dreads too great infiueuce of 
English precedents, 89. 



Martin, Rev. Thomas, prepares Mad- 
ison for college, 10. 

Ma.son, George, denounces slavery 
in Constitutional Convention, 102 ; 
describes bargain between New 
England and slave States, 106 ; op- 
poses ratification of Constitution, 
112. 

Massachusetts, appoints delegates to 
Annapolis Convention who do not 
attend, 59 ; behind Virginia in es- 
tablishing complete religious free- 
dom, 60 ; suppresses Shays's Rebel- 
lion, 73 ; its sacrifices in Revolu- 
tion greater than those of Southern 
States, 150, 151 ; contributes more 
recruits in 1814 than any other 
State, 311. 

Mifflin, Warner, manumits slaves, 161 ; 
petitions Congress for general eman- 
cipation, 161 ; motion to expunge 
his petition from journal, 161. 

Milan decree, 268. 

Mississippi navigation, desire of Con- 
gress for, 31 ; negotiations of Jay 
with Spain concerning, 32, 33 ; tem- 
porary willingness of Southern 
States to abandon, 32 ; renewed 
demand for, 33; attitude of Southern 
States toward, 76, 77 ; willingness 
of Northern States to relinquish, 
77 ; its abandonment for twenty-five 
years proposed by Jay, 78, 79, 80 ; 
rejected by Congress, 80 ; possible 
consequences of its abandonment 
to South, 81 ; agit.ation of question 
prejudices chances of Federal Con- 
vention, 82. 

Monroe, James, defeated for Congress 
by Madison, 121 ; letter of Madison 
to, on location of capital, 142 ; his 
reception as American minister by 
French National Convention, 218 ; 
protests against French aggressions 
on American commerce, 219; doea 
not consider France as hostile aa 
England, 219; wishes to baffle 
Jay's negotiations, 220 ; encourages 
France to threaten United States, 
220 ; rebuked and recalled, 221 ; 
his only excuse that he was de- 
ceived by friends in America. 221 ; 
correspondence of Madison with, 



342 



INDEX 



221 ; sells Madison furniture, 229 ; 
his treaty suppressed by Jefferson, 
24G ; on British complaints of Amer- 
ican commercial trickery, 259 ; in- 
structed to insist on abandonment 
of impressment in proposed British 
treaty, 262 ; disobeys instructions, 
2i!'2 ; his reasons, 263 ; makes subse- 
quent vain attempts to reopen nego- 
tiations, 263 ; letter of Madison to, 
on British outrages, 266 ; urged by 
Jefferson not to antagonize Madison 
for presidency, 272 ; desires presi- 
dential nomination as war candidate, 
296 ; testifies that Henry compro- 
mises nobody, 300. 
Morris, Gouverneur, condemns un- 
reasonableness of Southern demand 
for slave representation, 98, 99 ; 
makes a sharp attack on slavery in 
general, 100 ; moves reference of 
Blave trade and trade regulation to 
a committee, 105 ; on popular sup- 
port of Jefferson, 244. 

"National Gazette," story of its 
establishment by Freneau, 168, 172. 

New England, opposition in, to mo- 
lasses tax, 127 ; tour of Madison and 
Jefferson in, 175 ; stronghold of 
Federalism, 243; opposes embargo, 
279; opposes war with England, 
296 ; mission of Jolm Henry to, 
298-301 ; suspected by Henry of 
plan to secede, 299 ; reluctant to 
attack Canada, 310; yet contributes 
majority of soldiers, 311 ; hatred of 
Madison for, 311 ; calls Hartford 
Convention, 311 ; does not really 
desire alliance with England, 300 ; 
talks disunion, 301 ; insincerity of 
Madison in accusing it of plan to 
secede, 302, 303 ; folly of Madison 
in not involving it, by naval activity, 
in w-ar, 310. 

New Hampshire, appoints delegates 
to Annapolis Convention, who do 
not attend, 59 ; precedes Virginia 
in ratifying Federal Constitution, 
115. 

New Jersey, sends delegates to Anna- 
polis Convention, 59 ; its instruc- 
tions to delegates, 50, CO. 



New York, refuses consent, in spite of 
Hamilton's efforts, to five per cent, 
scheme, 36, 37 ; sends delegates to 
Annapolis Convention, 59 ; influ- 
enced by Virginia's ratification of 
Constitution, 115 ; tour of Madison 
and Jefferson in, 175, 176. 

New York Chamber of Commerce, on 
Jay treaty, 213. 

Nicholas, George, offers Jefferson's 
resolutions in Kentucky legislature, 
234, 235, 239. 

Nicholas, William C, consults with 
Jefferson concerning Kentucky Re- 
solutions, 234, 235 ; letter of Madi- 
son to, on New England, 311. 

Non-importation Act adopted against 
England, 260 ; arguments of Jeffer- 
son and Madison in behalf of, 200, 
261 ; suspended during Monroe's 
negotiations, 261 ; substituted for 
embargo, 271 ; repealed against 
England, 274 ; renewed, 277. 

North Carolina, appoints delegates to 
Annapolis Convention who do not 
attend, 59 ; influenced by Virginia's 
ratification of Federal Constitution^ 
115; comments of Madison and de 
Warville on its refusal to ratify 
Constitution, 117, 118 ; its repre- 
sentatives prevent choice of a 
Northern site for capital, 141, 142 ; 
its debt after Revolution, 151. 

Nuce, Captain, 7. 

Nullification, term used in Kentucky 
Resolutions, 234 ; denied in 1830 by 
Madison, 236 ; his views on, 236- 
239 ; responsibQity of Jefferson for, 
239, 240. 

Oedeks m CotTNCtL, issued, 267, 268 ; 
negotiations concerning, 268-308. 
Bee England. 

Otis, Harrison Gray, hie journey to 
Washington as representative of 
Hartford Convention, 312 ; ridi- 
culed, after treaty of peace, by De- 
mocrats, 312. 

Owen, Robert, Madison's opinion of 
his schemes, 322. 

Paper-money, its ruinous effects dur- 
ing Revolution, 20 ; proposals of 



INDEX 



M3 



Madison to restrict its issue, 21, 22 ; 
craze for, in States, 07. 

Parker, Jonatlian, proposes a tax on 
importation of slaves, 128, 129 ; his 
opinion of slave trade, 129. 

Party feeling, its bitterness in Jolin 
Adams's, Jefferson's, and Madison's 
administrations, 208, 209 ; decays 
during Jefferson's first term, 251. 

Patterson, William, argues in Federal 
Convention against slave represen- 
tation, 95. 

Peel, Robert, connection with John 
Henry affair, 300. 

Pendleton, Edmund, letter of Madi- 
son to, on Yorktown, 25 ; letter of 
Madison to, on necessity of ratify- 
ing Constitution, 111. 

Pennsylvania, refuses consent to five 
per cent, scheme, 37 ; its connec- 
tion with Potomac Company, 55 ; 
sends delegates to Annapolis Con- 
vention, 59 ; proposal to have na- 
tional capital in, 141, 142 ; its debt 
after the war, 151. 

Pinckuey, Charles C, alarmed at 
Morris's intention to oppose slave 
representation in Constitution, 98 ; 
satisfied with results of compro- 
mises, 103, 104 ; moves extension of 
time for slave trade, lOG ; ou its 
adoption, ceases to oppose granting 
Congress power to regulate trade, 
lOG ; on fugitive slave clause, 107 ; 
on inability of South Carolina to 
remain outside Union, 109 ; on 
popular support of Jefferson, 144. 

Pinkney, Willi.im, sent bj' Jefferson 
to negotiate a treaty with England, 
261 ; his instructions, 2C2 ; explains 
why he ignored them, 2(53 ; subse- 
quent action, 203 ; letter of Madi- 
son to, on situation in 1810, 281 ; 
asks in regard to British order in 
council concerning blockades, 288. 

Pooley, Greville, suit against Cicely 
Jordan, 7, 8. 

Potomac Company, its purposes and 
influences, 54, 55. 

Potomac, navigation of, 52-58. 

Powell, Captain, 7. 

Preble, Commodore Edward, in war 
with. Barbary pirates, 252. 



I Prehistoric remains, opinions of Madi- 
son concerning, 70-72. 

I'rinceton College, studies of Madison 
in, 10-12. 

Prohibition, Madison's views upon, 
321, 322. 

Protection, advocated by Madison in 
first Congress, 12G, 134, 135 ; by 
Democratic party in 1816, 319. 

Qu.\KER8, petition Congress against 
slave trade, 152 ; and against sla- 
very, 152, 153, IGl ; bitterly con- 
demned by slaveholders, 153, 154, 
157, 158. 

Quincy, Josiah, describes effects of 
embargo, 209, 270 ; points out fal- 
sity of alleged revocation of Milan 
and Berlin decrees, 285, 287 ; as- 
serts that Madison favored war 
to obtain presidential nomination, 
297. 

Rambouillet decree, 283, 284. 

Randolph, Edmund, letters of Madison 
to, complaining of lack of pay, as 
delegate to Congress, 23, 24 ; and 
on collapse of confederacy, 74 ; op- 
poses Constitution, 112 ; opposes a 
national bank, 1C3. 

Randolph, John, condemns non-inter- 
course policy, 200. 

Religious freedom, opinion of Madi- 
son concerning, 12-14 ; debate on, 
in Virginia Convention, IG, 17 ; af- 
firmed in Virginia Bill of Rights, 
18 ; Madison's share in securing, 18 ; 
further struggle for, in legislature, 
62-G6 ; incorporation of Episcopal 
Church, C3 ; question of compul- 
sor3' support of religion, C3-CG; ad- 
vanced position of Virginia regard- 
ing, 66 ; remarks of Jefferson upon, 
65 n. 

Rhode Island, refuses assent to im- 
po.st scheme, 33 ; comments of Mad- 
ison upon, 34 ; appoints delegates to 
Annapolis Convention, who do not 
attend, 59 ; influenced by Virginia's 
ratification of Constitution, 115; 
attitude toward slave trade, 130 n. ; 
carried by Democrats, 243. 

Rives, William C, on Madison's mo- 



344 



INDEX 



ther's name, 3 ; on Madison's father, 
5, 10 ; on his descent from Isaac 
Madison, 6-9 ; other quotations 
from his " Life of Madison," 10, 11, 
12, 18, 44, 48 ; on Mrs. Madison's 
name, 224. 

Robertson, Donald, teacher of Madi- 
son, 10 ; his son applies to Madison 
for office, 10. 

Ross, General Robert, invades Chesa- 
peake, 317. 

Rumsey, James, with Washington's 
aid secures monopoly for his steam- 
boat, 69, 70 ; opinions of Jefferson 
upon, 70. 

Russell, Jonathan, denies having seen 
ante-dated revocation of Milan and 
Berlin decrees, 307. 

Rutledge, John, on necessity of slave 
trade for the South, 101. 

Shats's rebellion, 73; relation of 
Congress to, 73. 

Sherman, Roger, willing to permit 
slave trade for sake of union, in 
Constitutional Convention, 103 ; 
criticises proposal to tax imported 
slaves, 130 ; on location of capital, 
140. 

Slavery, possible consequences upon, 
if Southern States had remained 
outside Union, 39-41 ; economic 
effect of, upon Virginia, 48, 49, 51 ; 
attitude of public opinion toward, in 
1787, 91 ; absence of extreme views 
against, 92, 108 ; in 1787, the para- 
mount interest of South, 92, 93; 
attacked bitterly in Constitutional 
Convention, 98,100, 101,102; cj-ni- 
cal attitude of Northern men toward, 
102 ; debate concerning, in first Con- 
gress, 152-161 ; foolish policy of 
slaveholders in defending, 155, 157, 
158 ; the argument in favor of, 157, 
158. 

Slaves, question as to their status in 
computing taxes under Confedera- 
tion, 38, 39 ; positions of North and 
South, 38 ; necessity of compro- 
mise concerning, 39 ; compromise 
adopted, 41 ; debate as to their 
Htat\i8 in Constitutional Conven- 
tion, 94-101 ; confusion as to their 



position, 97, 98 ; trade in, debated, 
101-105 ; proposal in first Congress 
to tax their importation, 128, 129 ; 
debate upon, 130-133 ; policy of 
Congress concerning trade in, 133 
and note ; Madison's treatment of, 
321. 

Slave trade. See Slaves. 

Smith, John, refers to Isaac Madison, 
in his "General History," 8. 

Smith, Robert, his remarks on Eng- 
land's policy in Chesapeake affair 
cause difficulty, 274 ; his relation to 
Madison, 278 ; insists on compen- 
sation for Rambouillet decree, 283, 
284. 

Solomon, Hayne, his generous conduct 
toward Madison, 23, 24. 

South Carolina, fails to appoint dele- 
gates to Aimapolis Convention, 59 ; 
its attitude toward slavery, 01, 103, 
104 ; unable to refuse Constitution 
in spite of threats, 104, 109 ; its 
sacrifices in war of Rebellion greater 
than Virginia's, 151 ; reopens slave 
trade, 250. 

Southern States, attitude of, toward 
slavery, 92, 93-109; oppose a tonnage 
tax, 127, 128 ; demand seat of gov- 
ernment on Potomac, 140-142 ; gain 
by Hamilton's and Jefferson's deal, 
152. 

Spain, negotiations of Jay with, re- 
specting Mississippi navigation, 31- 
33 ; offers commercial treaty in re- 
turn for abandonment of Missis- 
sippi navigation, 78-80. 

St. Clair, Arthur, his defeat by In- 
dians, ISO. 

States' rights, theory of, in Federal 
Convention, 80-88. 

Steam navigation, invention of Rum- 
sey, 69 ; opinions of Washington, 
Madison, and Jefferson concern- 
ing, 70. 

Steele, John, moves to expunge anti- 
slavery petition from journal of 
Congress, 161. 

Suse, John, p.t British capture of 
Washington, 318 n. 

Titles, presidential, debated in first 
Congress, 123-126 ; views of Adams 



INDEX 



M5 



concerning, 123-125 ; of Madison, 
Washington, and Lee, 124, 120. 

Todd, Dolly Payne, marries Madison, 
her appearance and character, 223 ; 
her name, 224 ; saves silver from 
Britisli at capture of Washington, 
317 and note. 

Tyler, John, introduces Madison's 
resolutions leading to Annapolis 
Convention into Virginia Assembly, 
07, 08. 

University of Virginia, Madison's 
connection with, 322. 

ViRorNiA, society in, 5, 48 ; religious 
persecution in, 13 ; elections in, 18 ; 
sentiment in favor of Mississippi 
navigation, 32 ; temporarily aban- 
dons it under fear of English, 32, 
33 ; economic conditions in, and 
trade, 47-10 ; attempts to improve 
its trade by establishing ports of 
entry, 49-51 ; opposition in, to Mad- 
ison's ports of entry, 51, 55 ; boun- 
dary question with Maryland over 
Potomac, 52, 53 ; question of Brit- 
ish debts in, G2 ; religious freedom 
in, secured, 63-06 ; paper-money 
craze in, C7 ; tobacco certificates 
in, 67 ; sentiment in, concerning 
Mississippi navigation, 82 ; struggle 
over ratification of Constitution in, 
112-1 16; opponents of Constitution 
in, 112 ; attitude toward domestic 
slave trade, 120 ; its services in war 
of independence compared unfa- 
vorably with those of Massachu- 
setts, 150, 151 ; and with South 
Carolina, 151 ; growth of Demo- 
cratic party in, 174 ; Federalist 
reaction in, against Genet, 202, 203. 

War of 1812, events leading up to, 
280-308 ; hopes of Madison, concern- 
ing, 309; naval activity urged by 
Webster, 309 ; attitude of adminis- 
tration toward navy, 310 ; opposi- 
tion of New England to, 311, 312; 
unwise policy of Madison in, 315, 
31C; capture of Washington by 
Cockbum, 316, 317 ; peace of Ghent, 
318. 



Warville, Brissot de, makes a tour in 
United States, 116 ; describes Mad- 
ison, 117, 118. 

Washington, George, president of Po- 
tomac Company, 54 ; elected dele- 
gate to Constitutional Convention, 
CO; letter of Madison to, on paper- 
money craze in Virginia, G7 ; cer- 
tifies trustworthiness of Rumsey's 
steamboat, 70 ; letters of Madison 
to, on proposal to abandon Missis- 
sippi navigation, 83 ; letter of Mad- 
son to, on chances of ratification 
of Constitution, 114 ; takes oath of 
office as President, 122; question 
of his title, 123, 124 ; said to have 
favored a pretentious one, 124 ; asks 
opinion of Madison and of cabinet 
on the bank, 1G3 ; his message to 
Congress (aid to have been tam- 
pered with by Madison, 167 ; con- 
sults secretaries as to his refusing a 
second term, 186; his reasons for 
accepting, 187 ; his impartiality in 
cabinet quarrel, 188 ; on neutrality 
between England and France, 195 ; 
issues proclamation, modified to 
suit Jefferson, 196 ; criticised by 
Democrats, 198 ; attacked by Ge- 
net, 201 ; denies existence of a 
monarchical party, 203 ; opinion of 
Madison and Jefferson concerning, 
204; considered a dupe, 204, 206; 
his anger at Freneau's attacks de- 
scribed by Jefferson, 205 ; his influ- 
ence on Federalist party and na- 
tional policy, 210 ; sends Jay on 
mission to England, 211 ; rejects 
"provision clause," 212; said by 
Democrats to be bought by " Brit- 
ish gold," 212 ; called upon by 
House of Representatives for pa- 
pers in connection with Jay treaty, 
217; refuses request, 216, 217; his 
message condemned by Madison, 
said to be written by Hamilton, 210, 
217 ; difficulty of Madison's rela- 
tions with, as leader of opposition, 
222, 223 ; his habit of asking Mad- 
ison's advice, 223, 24G. 

Webster, Daniel, urges naval prepa- 
rations for war of 1812, 309. 

West, its development dreaded by 



346 



INDEX 



Eastern States, 77 ; or considered 
impossible, 140 ; power of Congress 
to regulate slavery in, stated by 
Madison, 159 ; its expansion desired 
by Jefferson, 24G, 247. 
Wilson, James, in Continental Con- 
gress, 60 i on necessity of compro- 



mise over slavery in Constitutional 
Convention, 96. 

Women, education of, opinion of 
Madison concerning, 322, 323. 

Wright, Fanny, Madison's corre- 
spondence with, 322. 



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